By Revolución Socialista-PSOL. ISL, Brazil
While the right and the far right gain prominence (including positions in the current government), the project of an anti-capitalist left, with class independence and a socialist program of the PSOL is fading away. We, an internal current with militants and founders of the party, see with deep concern this ongoing metamorphosis with the aim of adapting to the project of class conciliation.
In the last National Commitee (NC), the majority leadership (Primavera Socialista and Revolução Solidária) approved a political resolution of the situation supporting the Lula-Alckmin government, at the very moment of the presentation of the Fiscal Framework, a reissue of the ceiling of expenditures in public policies. While the government prepares to attack the working people, the PSOL declares its unconditional support. Unfortunately, this was not the only erroneous resolution.
Ongoing bureaucratization
The NC voted a resolution regulating the summoning and functioning of the 8th National Congress of the party. One of the new rules stipulates that the presentation of a Thesis needs approximately 1,700 signatures -in the previous Congress it was 400-. We are talking about another attack on internal democracy, a change that puts an end to the diversity of opinions and tendencies, a characteristic that gave birth to the PSOL. In 2005, when the radicals decided to found a new anti-capitalist party, at a time when the PT was adapting to the bourgeois state and government, the unification of different traditions of the socialist left in the same party was achieved. The success of this orientation is explained by the decision of each of the political leaderships, gathered there, to respect the differences and build unity.
We defend a method of operation that respects different opinions because we believe in the power it brings. It is from the meeting of different opinions, debate and collective elaboration that the best synthesis emerges. We believe that differences between colleagues who share a common project are logical and necessary. But the majority leadership throws all this away.
In small cities, where the party had a few hundred affiliates, there have recently been two or three times more new affiliations. Even with absurd cases of one person affiliating hundreds and thousands of others. In cities where there are parliamentarians, or where the PSOL is part of the government, the number of new affiliations is in the tens of thousands. This is a corrupt process of massive affiliations, without any political criteria, and which is not expressed in the participation of these affiliates in the daily militancy of the party.
The process of bureaucratization of the PSOL goes hand in hand with its political metamorphosis. The radical change in the political project of the party, transforming itself into a defender of the project of class conciliation, needs a method of functioning that eliminates debate, criticism and confrontation of ideas. It is a steamroller at the service of the imposition of a policy with the methods of any bourgeois party.
Primavera slanders Silvia Letícia, woman and councilwoman of PSOL in Belém-PA
A clear example of all this is the political slander that Primavera Socialista (the internal tendency of Mayor Edmilson Rodrigues) is making against our fellow councilwoman in Belém/PA. Silvia Letícia is a comrade with a long trade union and political tradition. She is a founding member of PSOL, currently a board member of SINTEPP Belém (Union of Public Education Workers of the State of Pará), national leader of CSP-Conlutas, national leader of the Socialist Revolution, and today a PSOL councilwoman in the city, who never tires of ratifying her commitment to the working and poor people.
We will not remain silent in the face of this political slander against the rights of the workers and poor people. According to Councilwoman Silvia Leticia herself, “I am a PSOL councilwoman, I follow what my party determines, its program and its statutes. I defend in the City Council the program we presented in the elections for the population of Belém, a program of change for the better. Therefore, I have been demanding in the spaces to which I have had access, the fulfillment of the campaign promises made by Mayor Edmilson, nothing more than that”.
For all this, the tendency of the Mayor, with a majority in the State Commitee of PSOL-PA, published an article slandering the comrade of reproducing fake news and allying with the extreme right. Packed with lies, this article, with methods already known in history by Stalinism, has no other objective than to try to expel our comrade from the PSOL. Primavera and Edmilson have fallen into despair and that is why they choose the deplorable method of slander. They are terrified that a councilwoman of the same party, with access to all the information on the municipal administration of Edmilson, uses the parliament to denounce and defend the rights of the workers, the women workers and the poor people who suffer in Belém because of a “left” bourgeois administration.
We ask for all the organized and individual solidarity with Silvia Letícia against this political slander by Primavera.
It is time to act. The socialist left needs to unite
The 8th National Congress of the PSOL, summoned for September 29, 30 and October 1 of this year, is of paramount importance. It is the moment to act in unity with all those who defend the founding project of the party. To defend the anti-capitalist and independent PSOL, we must make the greatest efforts and present to the rank and file of the party a class and left alternative. From Revolución Socialista we militate very firmly for this and we call on all the militancy to share this objective and join our ranks.