Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

Declaration of the Socialist Democracy Tendency of the Workers Party

Socialist Resistance no12  |  page 21-22

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

were expelled), the IMF approved its new $14 billion package for Brazil, followed 24 hours later by another $7.5 billion from the World Bank?

And is it not true that the following week President Bush called Lula to congratulate him on his government's performance -including its success in pushing through the pension reforms? Does Paulo Delgado believe these events are entirely disconnected?

On the second point, Paulo Delgado does not mention that very similar pension reforms were vigorously opposed and effectively prevented by the PT when they were put forward by the previous government of

14 December 2003 was a very sad day in the history of the PT.

The expulsion of parliamentarians who defend historical positions of the PT, including positions approved in the last National Meeting of the party, held in December 2001, for not accepting changes in political orientation that had not been widely debated by the party collectively, does not have democratic legitimacy. This violence sullies the history of the party.

The expulsion of comrade Heloisa Helena, member of the National Directory of the PT and its Executive Commission, is the most absurd. Comrade Heloisa Helena was leader of the PT group in the Senate of the Republic, where she gave a brilliant and to the working class, to all the Brazilian peo ple, to socialism and humanity. The vote fo this expulsion is a hard blow against what the PT represents as a socialist and democratic party. It leads to an enormous weakening and corrosion of the relations of the PT with left militants throughout the world

From the politico-moral point of view Heloísa Helena continues to be a militant of the socialist and democratic PT that we have participated in building since its foundation The DS, in line with the resolutions of its las conference, reaffirms the centrality of the fight within the PT to win it back to a socia ist and democratic orientation. We therefore appeal against the expulsion decision.

page 22 of the scan

22 socla Politics of the Lib Dems The Liberal Democrats election last autumn ce January 2004