Heloisa Helena as a Left Front PSOL-PSTU-PCB candidate for presidency has managed the peak of 9% of the votes in declared ballot intentions. In some states, such as Alagoas, where HH comes from,
The first conclusion is that the Front has broken the false polarisation between the two main candidates supported by the bourgeoisie and imperialism (Lula and Alckmin) and
This is a very important even. On the one hand, a good vote for the Left Front would
On the other hand,, it will give a much more ample base for the construction of a workers’ and social alternative that Brazilian workers need. From this point of view, the Front has become a milestone for thousands of fighters that were quite demoralised after the “failure” of the PT and Lula administration as a tool for change.
That is why PSTU was the first one to encourage the formation of this Front and today is carrying out an active electoral campaign throughout the country posing this alternative.
The character of the Front now
And yet, some smaller trends of the left in
The other central aspect is that PSTU defends the principle of the need for political independence of the working class while PCB and the majority trends inside PSOL are prepared to make agreements with bourgeois parties, that is to say, build a new popular front.
This battle has been fought even before the constitution of the Front. For example, HH’s initial proposal was to form an electoral coalition including the PDT, a bourgeois party that intends to site itself “to the left of Lula”. The demand that there should be no party and no figure of the bourgeoisie in the front was one of the conditions posed by the PSTU before joining the front and that is in black and white in the agreement of the constitution of the front. Also it is written in the joint electoral manifesto, “In this front there is room for workers, for the unemployed, for the millions of men and women who are in the informal economy, barely surviving on their labour, workers’ political and social organisation and independent activists.”
It is important here to highlight a fact: Joao Fontes, running for governor of Sergipe for the PDT, has tried several times to link his state candidacy to the figure of HH. This attitude was rejected in a joint manifesto of PSOL and PSTU of that state saying, “Joao Fonte’s PDT is one of the parties of the bourgeoisie. that is why, Left Front has decided that the PDT was not to be part of the span of the alliance in any part of the country.” That is why it is totally false to say that Left Front is today a popular front.
Discussion inside the Front
Simultaneously we have to point out that the most visible figures of the Front, such as HH and the candidate to vice-presidency often express popular front positions or point of view contradicting the agreement on programme and its anti imperialist and “broadly socialist” character. That is why the battle against the transformation of the electoral coalition into a popular front – be it through its composition or its programme, is still underway.
Every time the main figures of the Front slipped out of what had been agreed PSTU countered from the pages of its paper or its web page or through the spoke word of its candidate. This was the case of the proposal of HH and Cesar Benjamin that the main measure to give an impulse to the development of
Also on the issue of the land reform, when HH stated in her TV programme that it had to be limited to the unproductive land and be carried out “in keeping with the law”, In number 270 of Opinao Socialista, Mariucha Fontana, member of the national leadership of the PSTU, said that the real land reform could only be carried out if it began with the largest, riches and most productive land estates and using the method of struggle, such as occupation of land and expropriation, which contradict the bourgeois constitution.
Other important discussions took place of the issue of abortion, the discussion on the nationalisation of hydrocarbons in
In other words, within the framework of an active and loyal electoral militancy of the Front, the PSTU had maintained its total independence on political issues and issues of programme and is permanently battling against the constitution a “future popular Front”.
A difficult but necessary task
These debates are eagerly followed by the advance guard that participates of the Front and supports it and is drawing conclusions from the proposals of each one of the component parties. But for the sector of the masses that is prepared to vote for HH, the definition is simpler: they see her as a warring figure opposing Lula from the left. And the split of that minority fringe is – for reasons previously analysed – is highly progressive.