The PT and the New Republic

Abstract

In January of 1984, opposition political parties in Brazil organized a public campaign to demand direct popular elections for the President ofthe Republic. During the next three months an estimated eight million people took to the streets throughout the country. Public rallies were organized in every major city, from Rio Grande do Sul to the Amazon basin states, gathering increasingly numerous crowds. The 'Campaign for Direct Elections' reached a peak in early April, 1984, when one million people gathered in Rio de Janeiro and close to two million people occupied the downtown streets of Sao Paulo. Virtually all demonstrations were peaceful and characterized by exhuberant crowds of thousands of people dressed in yellow shirts with the inscription: 'I want to vote for President'. In every rally the leaders of the opposition denounced the 'indirect Electoral College' as an illegitimate mechanicsm for the transference of power. Opposition leadership was united in emphasizing that the only legiti? mate way to select the President of the Republic was through a system of elections by direct and secret ballot of all citizens. Public opinion polls indicated that 97% of the population was against the system of indirect elections and supported direct elections for President. Yet in January 1985, virtually all the parties ofthe opposition participated in the very indirect Electoral College which they had, just a few months earlier, denounced as illegitimate. By negotiating an alliance and a common program with dissident members of the government's party, opposition representatives in the Electoral College were able to secure the victory of Tancredo Neves (a member of the opposition PMDB) by a huge margin. Millions of people who had taken to the streets to denounce the Electoral College in early 1984 took to the streets once again a year later to celebrate its action as 'the end of military rule and the dawn of democracy.' Opposition leaders proclaimed the legitimacy of Tancredo Neves's presidential mandate and announced the advent of a New Republic. In the dawn of the New Republic, only one political party, the PT,1 refused to participate in the indirect Electoral College.2 In the period of less than nine months between the end of the 'Direct Election Campaign' and the victory of the PMDB in the indirect Electoral College, the main parties ofthe opposition had made a 180 degree turnabout. An electoral procedure previously denounced as illegitimate was now endorsed, the most important former leaders of the government's party suddenly became pohtical partners,3 and, perhaps most significantly, those who continued to insist upon the need for direct presidential elections were now denounced as 'illegitimate' and even as 'traitors'. How can such a turnabout be explained? And what does it reveal about Brazilian politics? One is tempted to turn to Gabriel Garcia Marquez who, during a visit to Brazil, remarked that it could be called the nation of 100 Years ofSolitude: 'It