"Ugly Duckling Turns Into Cinderella" - that's how the right-wing Brazilian paper Globo headlined its story on the extraordinary success of the revolutionary candidate Luizianne Lins in getting through to the second round of the election for Mayor of Fortaleza at the beginning of October.
Now Luizianne, a member of the Socialist Democracy tendency (DS) in the PT, has achieved what seemed impossible only a few months ago and beaten the right wing candidate in the second round.
A passionate speaker and tireless campaigner for Brazil's social moments, a former student leader and a single mother, Luizianne will now take up in January her new role as Mayor of one of the largest cities in the Northeast, the poorest region of Brazil.
Luizianne's election is a massive victory, not only for the PT in Fortaleza, which campaigning was evident in a number of further discussions.
There was a workshop on building the campaign against the Wall with Jamal Juma'a, Dennis Brutus, long time antiapartheid activist, and Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.
Luizianne's election
is a massive victory,
not only for the PT in Fortaleza, but also for
the revolutionary left
in Brazil and beyond. had defied the PT national leadership stand Luizianne, and for all those on the left in the PT that want to fight the course of the Lula government, but also for the revolutionary left in Brazil and beyond.
Another workshop looked at experiences of "twinning" -how to avoid duplication of existing projects and set up other initiatives with the grass roots community involvement.
Debates between European and Palestinian trade unionists
Many readers of SR will remember Luizianne's combative stance she came to speak at S and SSP events in London and Glasgow one year ago.
Shortly after the beginning of her election campaign, Luizianne stood at about 3% in the opnion polls, while the candidate of the former maoist, now ultra-moderate PCdoB, Inacio Arruda, supported by Lula, was at around 30%.
The PT leadership did everything possible to sabotage Luizianne's campaign, because they regarded Fortaleza as part of their 'deal" with the PCdoB.
Key leaders travelled to Fortaleza to back the Inacio campaign, Lula himself called Luizianne, at least indirectly, the enemy, and recorded a contribution to Inacio's election broadcast, which was only stopped when the local PT appealed to the election tribunals.
Sadly, many on the left of the PT did little to back focussed on how to get workers to stop the movement of goods to and from israel, how a November tour of Palestinian trade unionists through France could be built, and how future solidarity actions across Europe could be co-ordinated with both official and unofficial Palestinian unions.
Finally, the struggle of the Palestinians featured prominently at the big anti-war demonstration at the climax of the ESF thanks to speakers Tony Benn and Jamal Juma'a. Notching up a famous victory: Luzianne Lins Luizianne either, in line with their orientation of not confronting openly the policies of the PT government.
However, as Luizianne herself repeatedly argued, Inacio Arruda's decline was a clear result of his record in voting for Lula's pension reforms and other neo-liberal measures.
Her own rise was in turn a clear result of her insistence on an open, non-sectarian but consistently radical defence of the PT's socialist tradition.
Her campaign was actively supported by local members of the PSOL, the party set up by Senator Heloisa Helena and others expelled from the PT one year ago. In the second round the PSOL nationally also endorsed her campaign.
Luzianne's victory significantly reshapes the landscape for uniting the Brazilian left against the policies of the Lula government. It poses sharply what many have been arguing for, the need for the left to work together inside and outside the PT.
Luizianne's breakthrough should be seen in the context of other key results for the PT and for DS.
The right-wing PT Mayor of Sao Paulo, Marta Suplicy, was uncermoniously defeated in the second round by Jose Serra of the PSDB, the technocratic, neo-liberal party of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Even though the PT in Sao Paulo stitched together some desperate last minute alliances with the likes of Paulo Maluf, the best know symbol of right-wing corruption in Brazil, four years of a timorous, lack-lustre administration handed the this key city government back to the man who lost to Lula in the 2002 presidential race.
Although the PT managed to win the mayor's elections in several of the industrial suburbs of Sao Paulo, it lost in Sao Bernardo, the birthplace of the PT and the CUT trade union federation, and the place where Lula himself made his name as a combative leader of the metalworkers union a quarter of a century ago.
Elsewhere in Sao Paulo state and across the more developed south of Brazil, the PT lost key industrial cities and state capitals.
The biggest loss came in Porto Alegre, the home for 16 years of the participatory budget and more recently of the World Social Forums, where Raul Pont, also of DS, lost in the second round. Raul was one of the main architects of the participatory budgets and one of the main leaders of the left in the PT nationally.
Although he has held on to his well-founded left credentials, the fact is the PT in Porto Alegre, tradtionally the main stronghold of DS, did not mount a combative campaign against the policies of the PT government in Brasilia.
While criticising the orientation of Lula's economic policy and the "slow pace" of change, it continued to refer to the adminstration as "our government".
Other DS members, such as Senator Ana Julia and MP Tarcisio Zimmerman, both of whom repeatedly voted FOR the Lula reforms, failed to get elected as Mayors in the state capital of Belem, in the Amazon, and in the small industrial city O1 Novo Hamburgo near Porto Alegre.
One other positive note was Araraquara, a provincial city in Sao Paulo state of about 200,000 inhabitants, where Edinho Silva of DS, another committed practitioner of the PB, had already been reelected for a second term in the first round.
It is to be hoped that both the few successes, and the many failures, of the PT left in these elections will give food for thought to those socialists in Brazil, both inside and outside the PT, who want to build a mass, militant alternative to the disasterous policies of the Lula
The remarks made by Raul Pont to his disappointed supporters may be a positive sign in this direction.
He said that while electoral defeat, after 16 years, was a bitter blow, 'our struggle' is part of a much bigger one, to change the world, that goes back much further, and will continue much further into the future.
The left internationally needs to give all the support it can to the Brazilian left in this process. Most immediately we must build backing for the new adminstration of Luizianne. Lins in Fortaleza.
If it wants to maintain its radical, anti-neoliberal stance, it is likely to come under intense pressure, political and financial, from the PT government in Brasilia.
Resisting such pressure will demand broad support both within Brazil and beyond. Concrete international links -for example with some of the new radical, pro-Chavez town hall administrations that have just swept the board in Venezuela's local elections, could play a vital part.
page 18 of the scan
ran