Stampede Starts: Over 400 Leaders Quit Brazil's Workers Party
Written by Newsroom
Wednesday, 28 September 2005
The extent of the disillusion with the corruption scandal involving the Brazilian administration of President Lula da Silva is taking its toll in the ruling Workers Party, four Deputies resigned and 400 grass root leaders have left.
This happens on top of the resurgence this week of the Landless Movement protest campaign against undelivered promises of land reform with massive street protests and occupation of government buildings.
"I feel bad, I'm not happy, but if I remain in the Workers Party I have no voice", said Maria José Maninha, one of the four Congress members who abandoned the party.
Ms. Maninha who was one of the party's founders in 1980 added she was leaving because of the corruption scandal and her disenchantment with the current economic policy of the Lula administration.
But also because according to Brazilian electoral legislation if she wants to run for the 2006 October general election, candidates must have at least one year in the party they will represent and the registering period ends next Friday.
Ms Maninha and her three colleagues will be registering with the Socialism and Freedom party, PSOL.
With the exit of the four Deputies the Workers Party Lower House representation is down to 84 and the PMDB (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro, Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement) with its 87 members becomes the leading group.
Besides, two of the original founders of the party, although with no legislative posts, also have left for the PSOL. Senator and former Education minister Cristovam Buarque had also left the party earlier. Buarque went to the PDT.
PSOL was founded June 2004 by a Senator and three Deputies who were fired from the Workers Party in December 2003 for criticizing and opposing the administration's economic policies.
The 400 grass root leaders belonging to trade unions and social groupings are also leaving because of the corruption scandal and the recent party's (September 18) election where apparently the leading faction (made up mostly of those allegedly involved in managing illegal undeclared funds) and which has ruled for the last ten years won the first round. The run off is scheduled for October 9.
Meantime militants from the Landless Movement occupied the building of the Brazilian Colonization and Land Reform Institute in six major cities including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Florianópolis and Goiânia.
"Our movement is promoting these takeovers to protest the non compliance of the agreement signed last May 17 between the Lula administration and the participants in the Land Reform National March," said a spokesperson for the protestors. This article appeared originally in Mercopress - www.mercopress.com.
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Brazil received a huge boost in its international image with its selection as the host of the 2016 Olympics, but it was really just the cherry on top of the overall recognition of the country's ascension to the ranks of one of the world's most important countries. Now, as it finally takes its place on the world scene, there has been a great deal of concern about what kind of image Brazil hopes to project, now that the world is really paying attention. 
The only good thing to say about the visit to Brazil of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on Monday November 23, is that it was mercifully short and lasted less than 24 hours. Ahmadinejad had his picture taken being hugged by president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva who gave him a warm welcome and said Iran had every right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
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Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
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Are the four resigning deputies...included in the 6 PT members, accused of wrongdoings by the CPI investigations ????
If so, normal they resign because by doing so...they cannot be expulsed...and therefore can be back for next year elections !!!!!!
Clarifications are needed in order not to mix up why they truly resign !!!!