Radical Socialist Runs Against Lula

[blake 3:17]

Elections in Brazil will be taking place in October of this year, and the Party of Socialism and Liberty (PSOL) is appealing for socialists beyond Brazil to sign the statement below in support of its candidate, Heloisa Helena.

Please read the statement and circulate it. Information about how to add your name appears at the bottom of this message.

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SOCIALISTS OF THE WORLD SUPPORT HELOISA HELENA

Two years ago, some of us signed a statement protesting against the expulsion of Heloisa Helena from the Brazilian Workers Party (PT). Today, Heloisa has become the presidential candidate of the new Party for Socialism and Liberty (PSOL), founded by bureaucratically expelled or dissident members of the PT. While Lula's government has followed a typical social-liberal course, disappointing millions of people who voted for him in the hope of radical social and political change, and with people all over the world expecting from Brazil a new impulse for anti-imperialist struggle, Heloisa Helena and her friends remained faithful to the original anti-imperialist and socialist program of the PT.

She is today the only candidate in the Brazilian elections who raises the historical banners of the Brazilian labour movement, of the peasants, the poor and the oppressed: a radical agrarian reform, suspension of the payment of the foreign debt, rejection of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA), a substantial reduction of working hours without loss of wages, a moratorium on Genetically Modified Organisms (such as Monsanto's Terminator Seeds), support for the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba) (ALBA).

The elections in Brazil are of concern to socialists everywhere in the world. In solidarity with the poor and the exploited Brazilian masses, we support the only socialist candidate in the next Brazilian presidential elections, Heloisa Helena.

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If you wish to sign the statement, please send an e-mail clearly stating your name, your country and, if you wish, other identifying information to <[email protected]>

[Ander]

Hoooooly shit, this is my country&#33; I wish I could fucking vote. :angry:

Don&#39;t worry, I will spread the word around to everyone I know to vote for this candidate.

[blake 3:17]

Revolutionary candidate refuses to stand alonside her mother&#39;s old bosses&#33;

Heloisa Helena is coming to the end of her term as Senator for the north-eastern Brazilian state of Alagoas. Until a few weeks ago she was standing as the Workers Party (PT) candidate for Governor of the state. To most people’s surprise, she looked like having a serious chance of winning.

But then the PT’s presidential candidate, Lula, and the majority leadership, decided to impose an electoral alliance across the country with a minor but distinctly right-wing, bourgeois group, the Liberal Party (PL). It’s a rag-bag organisation, which likes to lean on its nationalist credentials.

It includes a multimillionaire textile magnate, the founder of the main yellow trade union confederation, and the owners of a second-rank media empire – loosely bound together by an allegiance to the evangelical Universal Church of God. This cast-list was too much for Heloisa. She resigned as candidate for governor.

All of these manoeuvres from the majority leadership of the PT are in the context of the forthcoming election – the first round of which will take place at the beginning of October. Opinion polls show Lula likely to win the second round. The multi-millionaire textile magnate is now standing as Lula’s running mate for vice president.

Then there was the IMF bail out of Brazil’s flagging economy – when the much more acute situation in Argentina has been constantly turned down for funds. But three quarters of the money will only be paid out after the elections – a clear message that anyone who deviates from current austerity measures will be punished.

Heloisa’s stand hardly came as a surprise. She had built a formidable reputation in her home state as the scourge of the local oligarchy. In 1997 she became the figurehead of a campaign of mass demonstrations to oust one particularly corrupt governor.

Her surprise election to the senate a year later, on the back of this campaign, turned her into one of the best known figures on the left of the Workers Party. She regularly crossed swords on the national news with the grandees of the Brazilian political establishment, many of them from the old sugar planting families of her own north-eastern region.



Her exposure of malpractice by the most powerful of these figures – then the President of the Senate – led to his expulsion from the Senate and helped break up the governing coalition earlier this year.

Heloisa Helena is a member of Socialist Democracy, the tendency of Fourth International supporters within the PT.

Link to story about and speech by Heloisa Helena. (http://www.labournet.org.uk/so/57brazil1.htm)

[TC]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews...ld/15181694.htm (http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/15181694.htm)

i think the left should support her rather than Lula.

[Enragé]

honestly

how many elected fuck ups does the world need before it sees that revolution is the only way?

[Xiao Banfa]

honestly

how many elected fuck ups does the world need before it sees that revolution is the only way?


"elected fuck up" Hugo Chavez is doing quite well of convincing people of that.

[blake 3:17]

^^ Engaging in elctoral politics doesn&#39;t mean opting out of more radical politics or forms of direct action. In this case, creating a respectable Left split from the PT (the Bralzilian Worders Party) would advance extraparliamentary direct acxtion politics. Lula has taken the social movments and helped smash their power.

] There are right challengers as well as Helena:
V=Lula Widens Lead in Brazil Presidential Election Poll (Update1)
Aug. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva widened his lead over Geraldo Alckmin, his main rival in October elections, as quickening economic growth and slowing inflation buoyed voter confidence in Lula&#39;s government, a Sensus poll showed.

Lula, 60, garnered the backing of 47.9 percent of voters in the survey, up from 44.1 percent in July while support for Alckmin, of the opposition Social Democracy Party, fell to 19.7 percent from 27.2 percent, according to a Belo Horizonte-based Instituto Sensus taken from Aug. 1 to Aug. 4.

``Lower inflation and other positive economic indicators have helped boost support for Lula, especially among the poor,&#39;&#39; said David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia.

Alckmin, meanwhile, has struggled to connect with voters in his ad campaigns, pushing him down in the polls, Ricardo Guedes, the director of Sensus polling company, told reporters in Brasilia. Fleischer said that Alckmin, who stepped down as governor of Sao Paulo in March to launch his presidential bid, will erode further as the gang attacks in the state hurt his image.

Some of the voters that Alckmin, 53, is losing are migrating to Heloisa Helena, a senator and former member of Lula&#39;s Worker&#39;s Party, Guedes said. Her backing rose to 9.3 percent in the poll from 5.4 percent in July. Guedes said that Helena, 44, is building support within Brazil&#39;s middle class voters.

Story. (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=ayxgH1Ci3Sb4&refer=latin_america=)

[Tekun]

Well she certainly sounds like a good candidate
Yet I&#39;ll reserve my judgement until I read and research her positions a lil more
Lula&#39;s downfall is certainly plausible if Heloisa&#39;s support is as widespread as it appears to be

Although I&#39;m with NKOS about revolution being the only solution, this election is crucial if South America or rather Latin America is to break the chains of US imperialism
And after breaking these chains, the ppl of Latin America can then focus on overthrowing the system that continues to oppress them