Resign now!

INTERNET: "I'd like to have your attention to the significance of this new tool, which has no owner and is free from censorship. We need to qualify themselves for it. I think that then we will pierce the silent curtain which the midia has thrown over our movements."
(LEONEL BRIZOLA, march 1997)

Throughout his campaign for re-election, under the slogan The Man Who Defeated Inflation Will Overcome Unemployment, President Fernando Henrique Cardoso misled the electorate, with an overwhelming propaganda where the opposition had virutally no chance. What does he now that he has been reelected and restated as President of the Republic? His acts show that everything he promised has proved false and deceitful: The Real Plan succumbed with the maxi devaluation of the national currency and the return of inflation. The Real Plan was a cunning and overwhelming ploy aimed at making-up inflation with basis on a new currency, the Real, and the selling of most of our profitable and strategic stated companies to multinational incorporations for neglected prices. Now, that he's lost the people respect there's no way out to Brazil, as a country, but the resignation by Mr. Cardoso.

The Labor and nationalist leader Leonel de Moura Brizola, who has long been denouncing Mr. Cardoso's policy in an almost solitary way, rushes to a new crusade, just as he led – and won - the Campaign for the Legality, in 1961, when governor of Rio Grande do Sul. At that time, Mr. Brizola promoted a civilian rebellion which prevented a civilian-military coup against the Vice-President João Goulart take over, the man in line to succeed President Jânio Quadros, who just had resigned from office. In 1986, he unmasked Cruzado Plan, the first of a series of "miraculous" economic programs, of which the Real has become the greatest symbol. Since then, he has been struggling against all these ploys and for an autonomous development for Brazil and its people.

Now, Mr. Brizola, former governor of Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro states, twice President candidate, one of the vice-presidents of Socialist International and present president o PDT (Democratic Labor Party) has embarked on a national campaign to induce Mr. Cardoso to take the decision to resign as President. He sustains that the resignation is the best and constitutional way to overcome Brazil’s crisis, since the nation could engage in an autonomous salvation program aimed at its economic and social development. With this purpose, Mr. Leonel Brizola has launched a campaign on the internet, through this home page, and been traveling nationwide to urge the population to mobilize and convince the incumbent President to go home.

Thats the end

To Mr. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, everything ended on January 13, 1999, 12 days after he was sworn in for a second four-year term as President. With the Real’s devaluation (in more than 50%) and a speculative attack that sucked more than US$ 50 billions from our battered economy, came the prices-rise and the deepening of unemployment, which has since been multiplied in geometric proportions. Only in Sao Paulo, our greatest city, the unemployment rates is around 20%.There’s been also the breakdown of the essential services, specially health, education and transportation, with its inevitable consequences: overspread misery in the cities and the country and the increase of the urban violence and criminality. Furthermore, the Administration has risen the interest rates to more than 100% and slashed violently the funds for social programs, dramatically affecting poor children in the great cities and entire families care plans in the drought areas (North East). These measures have also generated a sharp recession, depreciating the real gain in the already devaluated salaries, while providing billionaire profits to the banks and the privatized stated companies, these ones the real financiers of the two Mr. Cardoso presidential campaigns. Now, under the pressure from the same financiers, Mr. Cardoso has ordered the privatization of the remained stated companies, considered the "jewels of the crown" – Petrobras, one of the world 20 biggest companies, Bank of Brasil (Banco do Brasil) and the national Savings Bank (Caixa Econômica Federal), apart from the huge hydroelectric plants, the biggest in the world, together with our rivers.

Taking arms

The Resign-Now! campaign is not motivated by putschist intentions as some conservative leaders have suggested, since, according to Mr. Brizola, "the putsch has already been performed against the country economy". The former governor also says that the resignation would not mean a humiliation to President Cardoso: "That would be an act of greatness" , he says after recalling that, in the past, Brazilian King Pedro I (1831) and President Getúlio Vargas (1945) came to that comprehension and gave their examples, resigning from their positions in order to save their country". "I have got no tradition in attempting a putsch. On the contrary, I take honor to be in history among those who have defended the democratic legality taking up arms", says the Labor leader, recalling his role in the Campaign for the Legality, in 1961.

Join our campaign: redenac@pdt.org.br