PT economists group swells, but course still depends on Lula

by

Economists linked to the PT have several ideas to tidy up the government’s accounts and convince party critics that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will adopt responsible policies if he returns to power. They are also sure of one thing: the former president does not want to bet on any of them now.

With the presidential elections approaching and the PT leader in the polls, the group interested in participating in the formulation of policies for a new Lula government is growing, but the space it will have to influence the design of its campaign platform is still uncertain.

The former president has presented generic lines of a future economic program in his speeches, but has avoided nods to the financial market such as those made in the 2002 presidential race, when he made clear commitments to the stability of the economy before the election.

“We need to recover democracy, so that we can put inequality on the agenda as a priority for a government, and not prioritize the spending cap,” Lula said in January, during an interview with journalists from websites that are friendly to your application.

Days before the event, in a meeting with 35 economists linked to the party, he made it clear that he does not plan on appointing a spokesperson for economic affairs anytime soon and encouraged those present to participate more actively in the public debate, expressing their opinions in a personal way.

In the view of the PT members, before any further definition of what he intends to do if he is elected president, it will be necessary to wait for the conclusion of the ongoing negotiations to assemble the broad party coalition that Lula wants for the launch of his candidacy, probably in March.

Lula wants to have ex-governor Geraldo Alckmin, his opponent in the 2006 elections, as his deputy on the ticket. Alckmin left the PSDB and is looking for another acronym to participate in the election. Lula’s articulations include parties to his right, such as the PSD of former mayor Gilberto Kassab.

Only then will it be possible to define the structure of the campaign and those responsible for preparing the candidate’s program. If the presence of PT economists is guaranteed, it is also likely that they will have the company of people who, until now, have only followed their debates in the newspapers.

“We have no problem in dialoguing with those who are not from our field”, says Guilherme Mello, a professor at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) and coordinator of the PT’s group of economists. “Lula is clear about his goals and will know how to define the right strategy at the right time”.

Created three years ago as one of the public policy monitoring centers of the Perseu Abramo Foundation, linked to the PT, the group has incorporated dozens of members in recent months, including former ministers of PT governments, parliamentarians and party leaders.

Not everyone actively participates in the debates, but everyone was included in a WhatsApp group where most of the discussions take place. Party president Gleisi Hoffmann entered. Former minister José Dirceu, who left Lula’s government in the midst of the monthly allowance scandal, also.

Former minister Guido Mantega only recently joined the Perseu Abramo Foundation. Lula’s usual interlocutor, he was nominated by the PT to represent him when the sheet invited presidential candidates to write articles about their economic plans in early January.

In June last year, the group created by the foundation had 32 members, including 29 economists. With the opening to new participants, the total reached 88 members, of which 56 with a background in economics. Most have long-standing ties to the PT, but not all are party members.

Mello shares the coordination with former minister Aloizio Mercadante, current president of the Perseu Abramo Foundation and linked to Unicamp like him. Mercadante taught in Campinas until the 1990s. At least 25 economists from the group worked at Unicamp at some point in their careers.

“I don’t see new ideas emerging from this group”, says economist Nilson Teixeira, a partner at investment manager Macro Capital. “Lula seems committed to seeking a broad alliance to get elected, and this will require new commitments when the time comes to define a government program.”

The PT group participated in the writing of the “Plan for Reconstruction and Transformation of Brazil” launched by the Perseu Abramo Foundation during the pandemic, in September 2020. The document proposes that the government once again assume a central role in the economy and increase spending to take the country out of stagnation.

“It will be up to the State to plan, project, spend, induce and stimulate the resumption of growth and the generation of jobs”, states the text. “The false limits set by permanent fiscal orthodoxy and the absurd and unsustainable spending cap […] need to be eliminated urgently.”

The foundation organized a seminar to discuss the document with Lula last year, but the event ended up being aborted so that everyone could follow the trial in which the Federal Supreme Court overturned Lula’s conviction in the Guarujá triplex case, held on the same day. .

Months later, the Lula Institute invited one of the formulators of the Real Plan, André Lara Resende, for a debate with a professor at Unicamp, Marcelo Manzano, an advisor to the Perseu Abramo Foundation. The economist had other informal contacts with party members.

Lara Resende participated in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso (PSDB) administration, but became a critic of conventional economic prescriptions and embraced unorthodox ideas, such as that Brazil is able to take on more debt to finance public investments without causing imbalances.

There is a consensus in the PT group that the spending ceiling adopted in the Michel Temer government to contain the expansion of public spending should be abolished, but its members are divided on the need to replace it with another mechanism that imposes discipline on spending. from the government.

Nelson Barbosa, who was Minister of Finance and Planning in the Dilma Rousseff government, defends the adoption of a regime with targets for investments and other expenditures, a commitment to a sustainable trajectory of public debt and periodic evaluations of government programs.

The idea was incorporated into a constitutional amendment proposed by the PT bench in the Senate in 2020, but did not advance in Congress. The party leadership never showed enthusiasm for the proposal. “We are against any kind of fiscal anchor,” Gleisi Hoffmann told CNN in January.

“You need to know what you want to do with fiscal policy in the first year of the next government, and how much,” says Barbosa, who is a columnist for sheet. “Everyone agrees that flexibility will be needed, but it’s difficult to discuss a plan without having an idea of ​​what actions will be needed in the short term.”

Since the beginning of the year, Lula has been advocating an in-depth review of labor legislation, including changes introduced by the reform approved in the Temer government, which abolished the compulsory discounted union tax on salaried workers and formalized work contracts in the intermittent regime.

The matter has been debated by the union centrals, which must present a list of demands in April. One of the members of the PT group, Clemente Ganz Lúcio, former technical director of Dieese (Inter-Union Department of Statistics and Socio-Economic Studies), participates in the discussions.

“It’s not about simply revoking what was approved before, but about rethinking labor relations and the need for social protection in a context where there are new problems, such as the situation of app workers”, says Ganz, who is a sociologist and is not affiliated to PT.

Lula has also been talking about a new industrial policy and has recently suggested that he awaits the conclusion of studies by the Perseu Abramo Foundation to define a plan. The objective, according to him, is to identify sectors in which Brazilian companies can become competitive if they receive official support.

There are doubts about the best strategy, says Esther Dweck, from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Members of the group defend priority for sectors focused on social demands, such as health. Others want to promote industries with the potential to grow, such as oil.

“Everyone agrees on the need to recover the industry, which has suffered a lot in recent years in Brazil”, says Dweck. “The United States and other developed countries are investing a lot in this as well, even adopting protectionist policies in certain sectors.”

Several economists from the group, such as Mercadante and professor Ricardo Carneiro, from Unicamp, also participated in the PT’s internal debates in the 2002 election campaign, when Lula promoted a turnaround in the party’s speech by promising to contain the expansion of spending and public debt.

After the victory, PT chose Antonio Palocci as his finance minister and gave him the freedom to form his team. No member of the group that acted in the campaign was called. Palocci broke with the PT in 2017, after being arrested by Operation Lava Jato and deciding to collaborate with Justice.

“The PT people use the party structure to project themselves, but the future government will depend on many things that are still undefined”, says economist Otaviano Canuto, who was part of Palocci’s team. “The key to what could become a new PT government is in Lula’s head, not in the party’s.”

You May Also Like

Recommended for you