"This insistence on a centre-left alliance is bringing programmatic confusion into the Workers Party." Joaquim Soriano Member of the PT National Executive
Lula da Silva and Jose Dirceu's centre Articulação (Articulation) current maintained control of the National Executive, but by the narrowest of margins. The left won nine of the eighteen elected seats on the National Executive. Dirceu's narrow majority is assured by his own vote, and those of two parliamentarians, one in the Senate, and one in the Chamber of Deputies.
Perhaps because of this narrow balance between moderates and radicals, the Meeting was short on policy decisions. According to Joaquim Soriano of the leftist Democracia Socialista tendency, "those of us who supported Temer for the presidency of the PT also wanted to 14 International Viewpoint #293 consistently defined itself as a patriotic, nationalist movement, and claimed Mexico's revolutionary tradition for itself. [DLB/JD] * Source: Mexican Labor News and Analysis, 16 September 1997, Contact: 3436 Morrison Place, Cincinnati, OH 45220 <[email protected]>, tel. (+1 513) 961 8722 EZLN statement: "Recognise our rights as Indian peoples"
We have come here to demand that Mister Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon [Mexican President] keep his word. We demand that he fulfil what he signed at the negotiating table in February of 1996 We demand that he pull back his soldiers from the indigenous communities of all of Mexico. [...]
We are not willing to return to our corner of abandonment and misery without efeat neo-liberalisn formalise Lula's candidacy for Brazilian president and present this to other allied parties. With this initiative, we would have a clearly defined popular and democratic starting point for an opposition to President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Unfortunately, the winning proposal postponed a decision until the end of the year."
Soriano criticises the re-confirmed PT leadership for its continued efforts to seek a broader alliance against Cardoso than that built so far in the National Congress and in mass mobilisations. "This insistence on a centre-left alliance is bringing programmatic confusion, forcing the PT, Brazil's major opposition party, into softening its criticism of neo-liberal reforms, and creating an alliance without Lula as its candidate. Do the "exiles" from the government bloc [which the PT leadership is wooing] have a programme? Do they have a candidate?"
As Soriano points out, "the government bloc does have a candidate, a programme and a definite strategy for 1998 and 2002. To confront it, we need defined objectives. The positive balance sheet of the Temer candidacy reinforces the idea that debate over the course of the PT is the alternative that strengthens the party as a whole. Warnings of splits trumpeted by analysts outside and inside the party did not prevent open debate among the activists and the deep roots of the PT among the workers and the people."
hope. If Zedillo is a man of his word, let him fulfil it and let the law recognise our rights as Indian peoples. If Zedillo cannot keep his word, let him make war on us and fill with bullets what he cannot fill with reason.
If he is not going to make war, then he should take his soldiers out of our communities. Those soldiers are far from their families, their mothers, their wives, their children.
Why does he keep them here if all they do is bring in prostitutes, alcohol and drugs to our communities?
While the federal soldiers persecute those of us who are Mexican, the great rulers are selling our nation to foreign capital. National armies should defend the people and not help the sale of our national sovereignty.
If Zedillo wants peace, let him keep his word given to the Indian peoples. And let him take his soldiers back into their barracks! * Source: Statement by EZLN Subcomandante Marcos, 12 Sept. 1997. Translated by: Cecilia Rodriguez, NCDLJ 1
An Extraordinary Meeting at the of the year will decide upon electoral tactics, alliances and a presidential candidate for 1998, and upon issues of party building that do not appear polemical. The next PT National Meeting will be held in the first half of 1998, preceded by state, municipal and branch meetings. According to Soriano, "this Meeting will decide on a political project to confront President Cardoso and build a just, sovereign and democratic country. The meeting may be declared a Congress of the PT."
"In 1998, we will confront our greatest electoral challenge, warns Soriano. "For the first time, we will put forward a project for a democratic and popular Brazil with an unfavourable balance of forces. One condition is necessary to properly fulfil this task: the unity of the PT."
The Meeting confirmed the correlation of forces in the party. Acording to Soriano, it will be remembered as "a landmark in the recomposition of our party around a programme, objectives and principles." "However," he continues, "it is necessary to re-establish the discussion of differences as a • constituent moment of unity in action. It is necessary to reconstitute a united PT identity that resurrects the cry of the First International: 'Peace among ourselves, war on the masters."" [JS/JD] * Joaquim Soriano is a member of the National Executive of the PT. The Democracia Socialista tendency of the PT is associated with the Fourth International.
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