'THE BIGGEST million people in Sao Paulo. singing shouting their presidential elections now!' Yet this was only lifetime to elect their country's president.
A few days earlier one million people had taken to the streets in Rio. Even before that nearly two millions had demonstrated up and down the Brazilian sub-continent in a clamour for democracy that has cut right across the country's different regions social structures. It's fever that has taken hold not •ONV Ene big dustrial concentrations of Une soulll-casl the 'paradise' of investment early 1970s - bit diso mue drought-stricken peasant areas where 10 million DOILI-COSL. people hare died of starvation in the last Salvowis deep in the Amazonian far west.
The campaign has been organised by local and national unity committees of all the opposition parties the mass organisain the history of Latin America' - that's how people were describing the action taken by some one and a half dancing, marching, demand for 'direct the last in a string of demonstrations leading up to last week's vote in the tions, featuring a caravan of touring speakers that included 110l only leaders of the various parties, but popular singers, TV soap opera stars, loolbalers, even sports commentators acting as comperes at some of the rallies.
By S Piper Predictably enough, the amendment troduce direct elections was aerealed last week.
heavily-gerrymandered it narrowv falled to get the required two-thirds majority, whilst the army put on a show of repressive force that hasn't been seen for several years.
But a campaign of that size is hardly likely to go away overnight and nor will the acute crisis which the dictatorship is caught in. The military are deeply divided Torture by the army in Brazil and the regime has lost control Uval its own mechanisms for choosing presidential successor, with warring publicly fighting and bribing their way towards the finishing post.
Which way things go in the coming months will deaspects 01 the situation. One is that, far, the crisis of the military regime has not coincided with a crisis of bourgeois rule as such. On the contrary, up until now the campaign itself has been massively dominated by the different strands of bourgeois opposition.
These liberal politicians are now caught between their desire negotiate solution that will increase ineir own stare or power, and the need to maintain at least some credibility in the eyes of the 'monstrous' mass movement they have helped to unleash.
The second crucial aspect is the existence within the campaign of a independently organised working-class current. This has a strong base in the unions, centres on the CUT, an independent trades union congress formed last year. But it also has a clear political expression in the five-year-old Workers' Party (PT). Both the CUT and PT very rudimentary the many internal expected in to be such new organisations.
So far, they have not been able to hold out a real TORS of the campaign's liberal leadership. ever, they have real mass influence. Their contingents have become more and more noticeable forward the demonstrations, and their charismatic leader, Lula, has become increasingly the most applauded speaker in the direct elec tions caravan Much will now depend on this current's ability to pull together its own supporters into a pole of attraction for the movement as a whole. This will be the only way of resisting inevitable pressures to wind down the mobilisations, and of linking up the partial demand for democracy challenge to the wina regime's economic policies incalculable suftering ther di C inflicting on tens of millions Brazilians.
Recent calls by the CUT for a general strike on these twin issues may offer a lead in this direcSuccess will depend on overcoming in practice the divisions which still exwithin the workers' movement, the militant current and those sectors still looking to the reformist block dominated by the Brazilian CP. in Israel, socialism.
Zion, for positions in the party ference on 19 May.
For many years Zionism critical of Palestinian trade unionists, basis for Palestine in a series of trade unions.
of Labour Movement with Palestinian trade union speakers Saturday 19 May County Hall, London Sponsors include TASS, Bob Wright, Ken Cameron, Claire Short MP, Harriet Harman MP, Harry Cohen MP, Joan Maynard MP, , Bob Clay MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP.
Credentials (2 delegates max per org.) £2 from. Labour Movement Conference on Palestine, c/o PSC, BM PSA, London WCIN 3XX
Socialist Action 4 May 1984
----- pull-quotes -----
congress on an opposition amendment which would have given most Brazilians the first chance in their