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| Lula and Brizola – Pragmatist versus Firebrand |
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| 25 July 2004 | |
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by John Fitzpatrick It was ironic that veteran politician Leonel Brizola should die just as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was about to visit the United States to “sell” Brazil to foreign investors, and as the House of Representatives was about to approve Lula´s proposals for a modest hike in Brazil´s miserly minimum wage. Both men devoted their lives to fighting for workers´ rights and succeeded through their doggedness and personal charisma. However, whereas Lula eventually became president and succeeded in bringing the country together, Brizola was too tempestuous to win over the mass of his fellow citizens. Lula was the Northeastern migrant to São Paulo who negotiated better wages and conditions as a trade union organizer and realized he had to compromise. Brizola was the gaucho from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, the scene of frontier wars and rebellions against central authority, where nationalism and radicalism were – and still are - part of the culture. Lula was prepared to bend and became the first working class president in Brazilian history. Brizola refused to compromise and ended his days as the autocratic head of a small struggling party, the PDT. Running Mate Brizola was Lula´s running mate in the 1998 election which was won convincingly by Fernando Henrique Cardoso. However, Brizola abandoned Lula at the last election and supported Ciro Gomes of the PPS, another small leftist party. Like many old-time socialists, Brizola felt that Lula had betrayed his comrades and supporters by maintaining Cardoso´s economic policies. In the days before his sudden death at the age of 82 Brizola was trying to arrange a pact for the upcoming municipal elections between the PDT and the PMDB, which officially supports Lula at national level. Although Lula paid appropriate tributes, such as declaring a period of official mourning, the idea of canceling his trip to New York was never raised. The House of Representatives delayed its vote on the minimum wage by a day as a sign of respect but then duly approved Lula´s proposals, thereby overturning the Senate´s vote against the President. This shows how the more moderate section of the Left – led by the Workers Party (PT) - is now in charge and that the kind of politics supported by Brizola is no longer relevant. Some of Brizola´s more boorish supporters booed Lula when he came to pay his last respects at Brizola´s lying-in ceremony in Rio de Janeiro. They taunted him, shook their fists and called him a traitor. It was a shocking display of disrespect, not only to Lula but to Brizola´s family and common decency. Brizola´s position as one of the leading political leaders over the past 50 years is undisputed. He spent 15 years in exile after the military grabbed power from his brother-in-law, João Goulart, in 1964. When an amnesty was granted in 1979 and Brizola returned to Brazil he was given a rapturous welcome by thousands of supporters. He was elected state governor of Rio de Janeiro twice but was rebuffed at presidential level, coming third behind Fernando Collor de Melo and Lula in the 1989 race. Brizola was later to lose much credibility when he supported Collor against accusations of corruption which eventually led Collor to resign as he was about to be impeached by the Senate in 1992. Legacy of Lawlessness? There is no room to go into Brizola´s legacy here but he has been accused of being responsible for one of Brazil´s greatest problems - the appalling lawlessness in parts of Rio de Janeiro. When he was state governor he was reluctant to send the security forces into the favela shanty towns which were spreading around the city. Critics have said that this softly-softly approach was one of the main reasons for the development of the drug trafficking gangs which now run the favelas and terrorize the local people. These places are virtual no-go areas and police can only enter in military-style operations which generally end in deaths of innocent people, gangsters and policemen. Brizola was also the kind of populist politician whose deeds could seldom match his words. Columnist João Mellão Neto of the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper gave a good example of the Brizola style of governing in a recent article[1]. Mellão recounts how, on becoming governor of Rio de Janeiro state in 1983, Brizola flung open the windows of the governor´s palace and declared that the building belonged exclusively to the people. Some time later when Mellão went to the Guanabara Palace he found it was filled with ordinary people, some with their children, crowding the rooms and corridors. An aide then told him that since the Palace had been effectively taken over by the people Brizola spent no time there but worked out of his apartment in Copacabana which is where the interview eventually took place. This kind of irresponsibility reminds me of a story a political consultant from Brasilia told me about a local politician in Minas Gerais whose name I have forgotten. When someone came to his office with a petition the politicians would listen sympathetically then pick up the phone and demand to speak to the state governor. The politician would get straight through to the governor, give him a telling off and demand to know how he would resolve the problem. The politician would then assure the petitioner that governor had promised to sort the matter out and send him on his way. In fact the telephone was not connected and the politician had just played an elaborate hoax in which the poor petitioner had been hoodwinked, the governor would get the blame for having done nothing and the politician would appear to be the man of action. While Brizola was an opponent of the military and a fighter for workers´ rights he had much common with the nationalist views of many officers weaned on the “New State” of dictator Getulio Vargas. He believed that Brazil could develop by using its own resources and closing its economy. This policy was more or less followed by the military and ultimately led to the so-called decade of the 80s when the economic miracle of the 70s was overturned and the country defaulted on its foreign debt. Stuck in a Time Warp Brizola gradually lost his influence because, unlike Lula and Cardoso, who changed their views, he was incapable of developing and changing his ideas. He was stuck in a time warp and could offer Brazilians nothing over the last decade except rhetoric. He also strangled any intellectual or political development within his party which he ruled with an iron hand. Several of today´s most prominent politicians, such as Anthony Garotinho and Jaime Lerner, left or were kicked out of the party. The PDT became a one-man show and, in the absence of its founder and boss, could be absorbed into another party or become a fringe party. It has lost much support in recent years and has only 12 deputies in the House of Representatives and five Senators. It is also weak at local level with only 68 representatives in state assemblies and around 2,700 councilors. There is speculation that Garotinho or Lerner could return and revive the party but it would take someone of colossal force to fill Brizola´s shoes. It would be ironic if Garotinho were to take over the PDT since, as state security secretary for Rio, he has done nothing to stop the violence which so many believe Brizola originated. Finally, it is worth returning to Brizola´s origins. Gauchos generally have a more aggressive, pugnacious spirit than most of their fellow countrymen. It is not surprising that three of Brazil´s most prominent political leaders in the 20th century were gauchos – Getulio Vargas, Luiz Carlos Prestes, who led the famous rebel Prestes Column on an amazing journey across Brazil in the mid-20s on a Brazilian equivalent of Mao Tse Tung´s Long March, and, of course, Leonel Brizola. |
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