Lula at Davos

Suddenly someone jumped from the crowd and slammed a cream pie in Genoino's face. A yell - "Lula does not represent us! The people on the streets represent us!" She is dragged away ,together with two comrades, by some PT flunkeys who are heard to mutter "that was a fascist act!" So ends the press conference in which José Genoino, the national president of the Partido Trabalhador, expressed his admiration for Lula‚s performance a few hours earlier. Lula, who lost a finger in an industrial accident and never tires to reiterate the decreasingly significant fact he only ate bread at age 7, had then delivered a speech to the most powerful people on Earth, in Davos. There he reiterated increasingly significant ideas, which the party faithful here have tried hard to look past: that Brazil should pursue a free trade policy, provided first world countries do the same, that inflation targets ought to be set, that dishonourable debts will be honoured. He added a few absurdities of his own to the bag. Asked whether the World Economic Forum should meet with the World Social Forum, he suggested the hair-raising metaphor of the WEF as boss and WSF as labour. In this he would be cast as trade union honcho. He even suggested that a body to combat hunger and misery ought to be formed "from the countries of the G7 and the great international investors". It was a difficult thing to hear even. The G7? Hunger? Not even Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who participated in the WEF two years ago, made such a self-serving and toothless intervention. And lest we forget why Genoino heartily deserved his pie, both he and Lula had been scathing critics of Cardoso's "sell out" back then.

It is a fair bet that the Bakers Without Borders are just about as powerless as anybody comes. Throwing a pie in the face of the leader of the PT is not the act of someone who can waltz into a ritzy hotel in Switzerland and strike deals between Havanas. It is not the act of "fascists"‚ (That, by the way, was an amusing accusation given that the leader of a Brazilian neofascist movement was heard on radio praising the third positionism of Lula only a few days ago.) It is the act of someone who finds no significant outlet for their politics in the present political configuration -hopeful as that configuration looks by comparison to the graveyard of American, British or Australian politics. Genoino said following his decoration that this was the act of "anarchists" who "have no place in this world." His discourse thus joins that of Tony Blair's "travelling circus" who implacably opposed efforts by the G8 to end hunger‚ no more than five hours after Lula joined into the dishevelled rhetoric of transnational finance as charity. This was an act of synchronisation which is completely at odds with the Brazilian way of doing things - the only explanation, of course, is that these beliefs have long sunk roots into these powerful men's minds. Perhaps they even sprouted from them.

Only the day before yesterday -an eternity it seems - Lula made a speech before at least 30,000 people gathered by the side of Guaíba River, as the sun set over Porto Alegre. It was impossible not to be moved. Disregarding the Petrobras baloons - the oil giant is a sponsor of the World Social Forum - the landscape was one which inspired: flags of Palestine, of the MST, of Iraq, of Brazil, of Chile, Cuba, Uruguay, of dozens of socialist movements, of every conceivable social movement and left political tendency, from the PT all the way to a huge contingent of esperanto proselytisers and another of anarcho-punks. Not much common ground to be found here, but the sheer numbers marching together perspired a palpable sense of political work that made of these differences something beautiful and hopeful. Before this multitude the new president of the republic made his speech.

At this point I should say, so there is not the least doubt about this, that I am extremely sceptical of Lula and have been for years. He strikes me as an inverterate opportunist and panderer of his own suffering, which was real enough, as real as the handmade suits he now wears and 2,200 dollar bottles of Romanée-Conti he now drinks. Nevertheless, I admit to nearly crying. Many of my compatriots did, and not only the PT faithful. Nothing he said struck as revolutionary or new, but to hear such words from the president of a major country was astounding. It pulled the rug from under my cynicism. He spoke of land reform, he spoke of the need for good universities anyone can go to, he spoke of the importance of political participation, he spoke of the responsibility he owed to socialist throghout the world ˆ all the while flouting his absent finger and with a distant, even sad look about him. He then justified his trip to Davos. At that point the mistique peeled of like mouldy wallpaper. In a typical maneuvre, he made it seem he had wrestled with his conscience and finally decided that it was good idea after all to go to Davos to change it from the inside. After all, he reasoned, if he managed to change the corporativist Brazilian unions into something else, why could he not try to do the same to the World Economic Forum. The first part of the comparison demands a certain faith in the belief that that change has in fact been achieved, the second, however, is just so far removed from the realm of the factual, it was painful to see people around me believe it. Very obviously, Lula had known for months, if not years, that as president of Brasil he must go to Davos: if he didn't go the noose permanently around the neck of this country would be given the gentlest of tugs, and such persuasion is irresistible. He knew perfectly well what he must do there: state a tame position, offer the rich an opportunity to be magnanimous and lead his delegation into one of the rabbit warrens away from the stage, where the actual dealing is done.

The PT is a large political party and an even larger social movement -and it is one within many movements, all of which possess a righteous fury and indignation that cannot be soothed so easily. Expectations here run very high. One can hope that those disaffected PT representatives who have loudly condemned the pilgrimage and prearranged conversion of Lula in Davos will not resign themselves to the presence of a true third way party here. Too much is at stake. Yet the natural trend is for Lula to dine well, dress well and govern well, a code for not having any funny ideas about listening to the people. Against this we must speak loudly and act visibly and directly. Thus, I translate and reproduce, as a token act of solidarity with pie-throwers and hecklers everywhere, the text of communiqué divulged today by the Bakers Without Borders:

"In regard to the action carried out this afternoon, the International Associaiton of Bakers Without Borders comes to the public to say that:

We repudiate the confusion promoted by the Partido dos Trabalhadores, which wishes to give the impression that our movement, the movement of movements, can be represented by or embodied in any kind of government. We come to the public to say that the wave that has brought about the election of the PT is not, in any manner, the same as that of the rise of the movement against capitalist globalization

Our movement does not have leaders or representatives. Nobody may speak in our name. If someone in Davos "represents" our movmenet, it is we ourselves, the thousands who occupied the streets of Geneva in protest against the meeting of bankers, businessmen and politicians which the PT has legitimised.

The hope of change which we bring cannot be coopted, again, and frustrated by politicians and political parties who wish to promote themselves at our expense. This time we are going to do things differently.


¡Que se vayan todos! A world without leaders is possible.

Bakers Without Borders - Porto Alegre Section"

Thiago Oppermann
26.1.2003