Declaration of vote for Bolsonaro Out

From November 2019 until April 9, 2020, the Workers' Party was divided over whether or not to support the slogan "Out with Bolsonaro."

The peak of the division occurred between April 10th and April 18th.

Throughout those days, the sectors of the Party in favor of "Out with Bolsonaro" launched a public campaign in support of their point of view. During those same days, the Bolsonaro government repeatedly displayed its criminal side.

Faced with this situation, sectors of the Party that had previously opposed "Out with Bolsonaro" began to change their position, first with public demonstrations on social media, then in a meeting of the parliamentary group, then in a joint meeting of the parliamentary group with the national executive. And finally, on April 29th, the PT's National Directorate was 100% unified around the slogan "Out with Bolsonaro."

But unity around the slogan doesn't mean unity on how to materialize the "Out with Bolsonaro" movement. Therefore, at the National Directorate meeting on April 29th, we began by putting two resolutions to a vote: one for "Out with Bolsonaro" and another defending "Out with Bolsonaro, Mourão, his government, and his policies."

Although the vote took place on April 29th, both texts were already known since the day before. And on April 29th itself, several amendments were officially registered to the text that was supposed to be approved. 

However, given the lateness of the hour, it was not possible to approve the amendments, and a new meeting of the National Directorate was convened for the sole purpose of approving the amendments, amendments which, I reiterate, had already been submitted on April 28th.

On May 1st, comrade Paulo Teixeira, the Party's general secretary, sent via WhatsApp to the members of the National Directorate the consolidated amendments that were to be voted on. In this consolidation, he disregarded all the amendments that the PT's Left Articulation tendency had presented on April 28th and resubmitted on April 29th.

The Secretary-General disregarded the amendments from the AE because, in his words, "the understanding is that your amendments were part of a text that was debated and voted on."

It turns out that it has always been this way in the history of the PT (Workers' Party). After losing the vote on the guiding thesis, the defeated theses highlight sections of their defeated texts and present them as amendments. This is not a maneuver, but rather an absolutely normal procedure. In other words: even though our complete text was rejected overall, we were legitimately proposing to the National Directorate that it accept aspects of it.

The Secretary-General disagreed with our argument and asked us to raise this "preliminary issue" during the National Directorate meeting. Which we did at the opening of the proceedings.

Those who consult the meeting records will be able to verify the following: those who argued against including the AE amendments in the set of amendments to be debated and voted on made two completely incorrect statements. First, they exaggerated the number (they even spoke of 10 to 20 amendments, or even 30, when there were only 8). Second, and more seriously, they said that the presentation of these amendments was a "maneuver" that would be resuming debates that had already taken place.

In fact, it is a universally accepted principle that matters already voted on should not be revoked. However, it is not true that the amendments presented by the AE were an attempt to revoke on topics that had already been debated and on which the Directorate had already expressed opposition. As we will see later, lies have short legs.

Be that as it may, the worst was yet to come. The debate was moving towards the Secretary General admitting that the amendments to the AE should be put to a vote, when one of the Party's vice-presidents, comrade Washington Quaquá, raised a point of order: that there should be no presentation or defense of any specific amendment. Instead, Quaquá proposed that we vote as a bloc on the text approved at the previous meeting, versus all the amendments.

In other words: the Secretary-General questioned the legitimacy of the AE amendments; Quaquá, on the other hand, questioned the relevance of all the amendments (with the exception of two that he magnanimously said could be incorporated).

The debate and voting on the issues mentioned above lasted approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes. In that time, we could easily have debated and voted on more than 5 amendments, perhaps 10 amendments. But no! We only debated preliminary matters.

When the Directorate concluded the vote on the point of order, it was found that Quaquá's position had won, with 45 votes; the opposing position, which requested that each amendment be considered, received 26 votes; in addition, there were 4 abstentions. In total, 75 of the 94 members of the National Directorate were participating, if I'm not mistaken.

Then a new controversy arose: Comrade Gleisi and others argued that, once the point of order was approved, a vote on the merits was appropriate. Comrade Quaquá, however, argued that the approval of his point of order meant not only the approval of a method, but the outright rejection of all amendments.

Perhaps to save time, it was agreed that there would be substantive speeches, contrasting the base text versus the complete package of amendments, which, as is clear, were not only those presented by the AE, but also numerous others.

At this point, Paulo Teixeira and Guimarães spoke, in favor of approving the text as it had been approved at the meeting on April 29th, with the exception of the two amendments mentioned by Quaquá. And, on the other hand, I spoke.

Later I will release the full text of my speech. In short, I demonstrated that the claim that the amendments presented by the AE were a rehash of already defeated positions is false and misleading. In summary, the amendments requested that the approved text include references to, or emphasize existing references to, for example: the coup against President Dilma, military tutelage, the defense of Moro's bias and the annulment of the trials against Lula, the emergency program of the Popular Brazil and People Without Fear Fronts, the PEC for direct elections and, last but not least, the theme of socialism (incidentally, highlighted by comrade Lula in his May 1st speech, but concealed in the party resolution).

In my speech, I also highlighted that the only point on which it could be argued that we were presenting an amendment on a topic already deliberated concerned the slogan: we proposed replacing the timid "Out with Bolsonaro" with a resounding "Out with Bolsonaro, Out with Mourão, his government and his policies." But I drew attention to the fact that Quaquá himself had admitted, in his initial speech, to incorporating "his government and his policies" into the slogan. Therefore, if there was any disagreement, it resided only in the reference to Mourão. And I insisted that the Party should take a position on this, because there are those who argue that we could build a government of national salvation around the vice-president general.

Finally, I denounced the extremely serious precedent that was being set. It would already be serious if the victim were only the AE. Because in that case, a new rule would be created according to which amendments CANNOT be part of the texts that have been presented in the preliminary vote. That is, tearing up a routine procedure, adopted throughout 40 years of the PT's existence (and by the entire left before that). But the AE was not the only victim. All those who presented amendments, including those who did not support and did not vote for the alternative text presented by the AE, were being prevented from defending their point of view. Even comrade Sokol, from DAP and O Trabalho, who voted in favor of the CNB+MPT+RS text, was prevented from presenting his amendment.

And it wasn't for lack of time. We spent over 90 minutes on preliminaries, as has already been said. Was it to exert the authority of the majority, which reluctantly had to adopt the slogan "Out with Bolsonaro" and now wanted to show who was in charge? Or was it because they didn't want to explicitly state certain positions, for example regarding Mourão? I can't say. But I'm certain that a very serious precedent has been set, according to which the temporary majority blocks debate. Either we reverse this, or the PT is at risk of its existence.

One final comment: in the Zoom chat room where the DN virtual meeting was taking place, comrade Quaquá repeatedly expressed, in various ways, the opinion that "majority is majority," adding that "the minority is trying to impose its point of view on the majority." In this regard, I want to remind you that the existence of rules that allow a minority to become a majority is part of basic democratic freedoms. When an eventual majority imposes rules that constrain or even prevent the minority from presenting its point of view, this majority is abandoning the field of democracy.

What was approved in today's DN (Diário de Notícias) was one of these anti-democratic rules. That's why I abstained: I will not recognize the legitimacy of a heavy-handed procedure.

In total, 24 members of the National Directorate abstained. Another 54 voted in favor of the approved text, without the right to present amendments.

Sincerely, greetings from the Workers' Party.

Valter Pomar

 2/5/2020

P.S. Out with Bolsonaro, his government, and his policies. And out with Mourão, too!!