PDT
History
Partido
Democrático Trabalhista - PDT - (Labor Democratic
Party) was constituted on June 17, 1979, in Lisbon, Portugal,
as a result of a meeting of laborites in Brazil and Brazilian
laborites in exile, headed by Leonel Brizola. Their aim
was to bring back into existence the former Partido Trabalhista
Brasileiro - PTB - (Brazilian Labor Party), created by President
Getúlio Vargas, in 1945, and headed by João
Goulart. It had been suppressed by the 1964 military coup.
From
this meeting, to which Mário Soares, then Portuguese
Prime Minister, attended, representing the Socialist International,
emerged the Lisbon Chart defining the basis for the new
party. "The new Labor", stated the document, "contemplates
private property conditioning its use to social welfare
demands. It defends State intervention in the economy, as
a normative power, a trade-union proposal based on freedom,
union’s autonomy and a democratic socialist society".
A
legal maneuver, sponsored by the dictatorship, however,
conceded the party’s precious name and acronym to a
group of adventurers and opportunists that allied themselves
to the ruling elite, coming up against workers aspirations.
Leonel Brizola, after 15 years in exile, Doutel de Andrade,
Darcy Ribeiro and other historic laborites had already returned
to Brazil when the electoral justice handed over the PTB
to that group on May 12, 1980.
This
group was ironically headed by Cândida Ivete Vargas
Tstsch, a second degree niece of Getúlio Vargas.
"The theft happened", Brizola denounced, crying
and tearing on television a paper over which he had written
those three leters that - for a long time - had been the
symbol of social struggles in Brazil. "A sordid government
maneuver", he said, "managed to usurp our party’s
name to hand it over to a small group of people subdued
to power...
The
aim to such plot is to prevent the constitution of a popular
party to convert PTB into a fake instrument for the working
classes". One week later, on May 17 and 18, the genuine
laborites got together in the Tiradentes Palace, headquarters
of Rio de Janeiro’s State Assembly, for the Laborites
Nation Conference which gathered over one thousand participants.
It was announced then the adoption of a new name and acronym
for the party - PDT.
On
May 25, another meeting at the ABI (Brazilian Press Association),
in Cinelândia, approved the program, the manifesto
and the Labor Democratic Party statutes. PDT started then
to put the Lisbon Chart into action, organizing itself,
initially in nine states, mainly stemming from Rio de Janeiro
and Rio Grande do Sul. The authoritarian regime, still in
force, established draconian rules to favor the party in
power - PDS, former ARENA, nowadays PPB - and restricted
brutally the opposition. Nevertheless, in the first democratic
election of 1982, PDT elected Leonel Brizola Rio de Janeiro
Governor, two federal senators - one in Rio and the other
in Brasília - and 24 federal deputies, becoming one
of the major political forces in the country.
In
1983, before Brizola took office as Rio governor, PDT militants
organized a new national meeting the Mendes Charter (Rio
de Janeiro small town that hosted the meeting). In this
document they established the political lines to be followed
in the reality of a new Brazil that emerged from the ballot
boxes. In 1989, PDT was chosen as the only full member of
Socialist International in Brazil and its leader, Leonel
Brizola, elected one of its vice-presidents.
The
Socialist International, which has its headquarters in London,
holds together the main popular movements in the world.
The neoliberal epidemics that would spread all over the
world, from thereon, would delay the rising of the party
to national power. However, as this anti-popular movement
starts to fade away, the PDT becomes the only democratic
alternative for a change in Brazil.
