February 21, 2005
THAT DOGMA WON'T HUNT:
Ruling Party in Brazil at a Crossroads: Critics say the grouping has dropped its core principles. Top officials insist it is evolving. (Henry Chu, February 21, 2005, LA Times)
If 25 sounds young for a midlife crisis, consider what the Workers' Party has been through in its quarter-century of existence.After its humble birth among disgruntled metalworkers, the party weathered abuse from a right-wing dictatorship, built a committed following and survived a bout of adolescent blues. It stumbled badly in its first outings at the polls, shed some of its leftist dogma and, after three successive defeats, succeeded in getting Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva elected as Brazil's first working-class president in 2002.
Now the party, or PT, is staggering under the weight of its history as it tries to decide what it stands for. A significant number of dissidents question whether the party has lost its leftist identity and no longer shines as a beacon of social justice in a country marked by a large gap between rich and poor.
Lula, a former lathe operator, was elected partly on promises that he would tackle the glaring inequities in income, education and health. But few, if any, of those pledges have been met. Instead, his administration has concentrated on promoting economic growth following the Wall Street-ordered prescriptions of his center-right predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a course that smacks of betrayal to many party faithful.
If people are surprised at this evolution, just wait until Hamas and Hzbollah take power. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 21, 2005 6:52 AM
It's depressing, isn't it, that the author is completely unconcerned about the quality of any government services? Only uniformity matters. But I suppose the equal sharing of misery is much more attractive when it's advocated for others.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at February 21, 2005 10:30 AMThe indigenous brie and chablis crowd, that most foreign correspondents use as their only contacts in country, come from the same class and have the same tastes and biases as those reporters. They are affluent people, who don't have to work at real jobs, living off the trust fund Mumsy left them. They have odd concerns like rain forests, global warming and gay rights. And of course, they have a pathological need to stick a thumb in the eye of Uncle Sam whenever possible, due to their overwhelming sense of their own inadequacy.
Lula, who is a product of the real working class of Brazil and who is smart enough to know how to count votes and where his votes come from, realizes that his job is to create hope, growth and opportunity for the hundred million or so of his countrymen who live in dire, desperate, grinding poverty. They don't care who brings them surcease from their travails, who gets them medical care, education, paved roads and running water. Nor do they care how he does it. And they certainly don't care about the sorts of issues that motivate the Faculty Lounge Left. In fact, they know that when they encounter the Faculty Lounge Left at rallies or meetings, that they get treated as if they are the 'hired help' not as equals in some ephemeral 'people's revolution.'
When Lula gets criticism like this, I think more highly of him.
Posted by: Bart at February 21, 2005 12:32 PMYeah, I thought Lula would be another Chavez, but maybe I'll reassess
Posted by: AML at February 21, 2005 1:32 PMThe problem is that Lula needs to show progress on actual improvements, or he'll be moved out and a real radical will be put in who will flush Brazil down the toilet.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at February 22, 2005 12:21 PMChris,
That is absolutely correct. There is no shortage of demagogues in Brazil who actually believe their claptrap.
It is also why he is getting such cooperation from Brazil's normally rather difficult legislature.
Posted by: Bart at February 23, 2005 6:19 AM