been pursuing since he took office in January.
The high point was a demonstration by around 30,000 public sector workers, especially teachers, on 11 June. They came to Brasilia from all over the country to protest against the government's plans for pension reform. As they marched down the Ministerial Avenue towards Congress, they linked up with a group of PT parliamentarians who had defied their leaders' instructions and insisted on joining the demonstration.
Senator Heloisa Helena, one of three PT members of Congress threatened with expulsion and a supporter of the Socialist Democracy tendency in the PT (see the accompanying petition), was lifted onto the shoulders of the public sector workers and carried past the presidential palace.
As we go to press, the same workers are making final preparations to go on strike from 8 July.
Opposition like this is still at an early stage. The PT government is still riding high in the polls. Lula even has majority public support for his pension reforms, which he has sold as an attack on public sector privileges in order to make resources available for his anti-poverty programmes, like 'Zero Hunger'.
But growing numbers of ordinary party members, and a large chunk of the intelligentsia that has traditionally identified with the PT, are becoming convinced that the goverment's policies are not a short-term tactic to buy time, but a long-term commitment to winning the confidence of the international markets
They begin to see that the essence of
's pension reform is not its attack on the Lula's aim is to drive down the state pension for millions of public sector workers .... •• high level of benefits enjoyed by a tiny number of senior civil servants (which most on the left agree should be changed).
Its real aim is to drive down the value of the state pension received by millions of poorly paid public sector workers, firstly to increase the government's budget surplus available for servicing the foreign debt, and secondly to open up the space for a parallel system of complementary pensions run by the private sector, In other words, it's the beginnings of privatisation by the back door. If this sounds like it would be music to Gordon Brown's ears, read on.
Recognition is also beginning to grow, amongst PT members and experts who support the party, that the government's anti-poverty programmes are not only being run with little money and a lot of chaos; they are also fundamentally misconceived.
Or rather, they are conceived very much along the lines promoted by the World Bank and favoured by Gordon Brown at home and abroad, as 'compensatory" programmes, with 'targeted benefits", intended not to contradict neo-liberal economic policies but to complement them.
This increasing awareness that the PT leadership has abandoned even its own very modest commitments to break with neoliberalism - as agreed at the last PT Conference in Recife in December 2001 -was beginning to show in some important ways even before the pensions demo.
In | May a series of personalities -• including four senior bishops,
Factors, literary critics, human rights campaigners and feminists among whom is Tatau Godinho of DS, Secretary of Women's Affairs in the Sao Paulo: City Lula opposing the Free trade Area of the Americas and his plans for autonomy of the Brazilian Central Bank
On 29 May 30 PT members of the lower house issued a manifesto demanding a change in the government's economic policies. Two later withdrew their names after coming under pressure from the PT leadership, but the remaining 28 include members of the main left tendencies (DS, Socialist Force, Left Articulation) and a number of independents.
They did not include the three PT deputies who are members of MES and CST (see petition accompanying), who favour more outright opposition to the government.
On 10 June a group of Brazil's best known academics - all long-time PT supporters - issued a manifesto opposing the government's pension reform plans and demanding the discussion be opened up throughout Brazilian society. They included Octavio lanni, Marilena Chaui and Chico de Oliveira.
On 12 June over a hundred PT economists signed a manifesto demanding "a complete reversal of the whole framework administration) sent a letter to President, of the economic policy" being followed by the government. This would include an immediate introduction of capital controls, a
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ast resistance Summer 2003 23
International resistance