BY JONATHAN STRAUSS
LISBON — In the last 10 years Portugal's Bloco de Esquerda (Left Bloc) has increasingly brought together some of the most important forces on the Portuguese radical left, including three groups (one Trotskyist, one formerly Maoist, and a left social democratic formation) and many individual social movement activists. In the October 1999 national election, the LB won 2.5% of the vote and gained two MPs.
LB's 25-year-old media spokesperson Jorge Costa said the LB operates in the context of the domination of Portuguese politics by the social-democratic Socialist Party (SP). This dominance was confirmed in the January presidential election, won by its candidate Jorge Sampoio. Only half the electorate voted, however, which was a record rate of abstention.
"LB groups supported Sampoio when he first was a candidate, because he was the left candidate against the right, which held the position", said Costa. "That choice was made to defeat the right, which was done.
"This time he was already the president and the candidate of a certain kind of politics. This doesn't publicly discuss the big matters that can change the lives of people in this country, which was what we tried to do with our candidate.
"Sampoio ran with the support of the SP and also won support from other electors. That people didn't go to vote was not a big surprise, because he was running for reelection and was the anticipated winner, but this showed the exhaustion of Portuguese citizens with his kind of politics, which comes from a supposed consensus. But there isn't a consensus. There is silence on the crucial matters, such as immigration, drug addiction, abortion, and working class rights."
These issues, along with taxes on the wealthy and opposition to the NATO bombings in the Balkans, are among those on which the LB has tried to group people together, Costa said. "Tax reform was the first big debate. In Portugal, only workers, employees, pay tax. The enterprises and self-employed people don't. We denounced this and proposed a series of measures to fight this avoidance. This was very important for the public image of the LB. We have also pursued a project on casual work, which was discussed recently, but refused by the SP.
"Not only does the SP, obedient to the European Union and the European Central Bank, make the wrong choices on economic policy, but it is very attached to the most reactionary forces of Portuguese society. For example, in a discussion on the separation of church and state, LB proposed a law to make that clear, because in Portugal there is still a concordat between the state and the Vatican. The SP instead passed a very ambiguous law that kept the concordat."
Costa explained this extends beyond relations with the Roman Catholic Church. The LB has proposed to end the discrimination against gay men and lesbians as couples, and at the time I spoke with Costa this was about to be discussed in the parliament, supported by a demonstration organised by LB activists. The SP was expected to reject it. Instead, the SP had adopted an ambiguous position, as it had on the decriminalisation of abortion: it would recognise all forms of cohabitation as economic relations, while not giving recognition to the sexual relationships of gays and lesbians.
LB parliamentary group
Costa continued: "Through the LB parliamentary group we have done a lot of work with the trade unions, social movement groups and non-government organisations. We have a free telephone line that anyone can call, which we publicised with posters. So we have developed a very intense contact with civil society, with working class organisations and all kinds of expressions of the popular struggle."
"The parliamentary group is permanently connected with the LB central leadership", Costa also explained. "All its main political positions and activities, which can be determined beforehand or involve polemics, are determined by the leadership body."
"There is also", Costa said, "a very strong intervention by LB activists in the anti-racist and immigrant solidarity associations and non-government organisations. We are the most influential current in anti-racist activity.
"Racism is very strong in Portugal. Its main source is the state, which discriminates not only in access to education, to housing and to jobs, but also in immigrants' civil rights.
"We have a very strong campaign to legalise the status of every immigrant living in Portugal, but the government has imposed a new law, agreed between the SP and the most right-wing party in parliament, the Popular Party, which puts the immigrants into the hands of the bosses, mainly in the building industry. The immigrants must have a certificate from their employers saying they have a job, which licenses them to live here for five years. After that, it may be renewed, or not. Le Pen, the French far-right leader, when he was in Portugal, said he was sorry not to have such a law in France."
Costa discussed the LB presidential election campaign, in which it had a candidate, Fernando Rosas. "It was a very large campaign. We ran it over five months, and used it to take LB's central issues and proposals to people and places they hadn't been before.
"This campaign was a very good experience, and the electoral result was good, given there was not a lot of interest in the election... We turned the campaign into one against NATO and the use of depleted uranium in Kosova. At this time, the informing of the authorities of the consequences of the use of depleted uranium in the bombings became known publicly.
"The vote for Rosas was 3%, that is, 130,000 votes, the same as in the national elections, but against a much higher abstention. It is important that we doubled or tripled the number of our votes in the cities of the interior, while the vote in Lisbon and Oporto was reduced, because youth were the main abstainers.
"We find our support mainly from among young people and the working class in the cities.
"We have a serious implantation in some student bodies, principally in the universities, but now there is also a secondary students movement against the degradation of the public school system... On February 7, 7000 secondary students demonstrated in Lisbon.
"On universities the LB presence is more stable. We have important groups carrying out public activities there and working in the student unions.
"We have taken important steps with regard to our trade union intervention. We held a national trade unionists and immigrant solidarity activists conference during the presidential campaign. This gathered together about 200 activists, who discussed the situation of trade unions in Portugal. We are going on with some coordination of trade unionists who are connected with the bloc."
East Timor solidarity
One of the most important international issues for LB has been the East Timorese people's fight for national independence from Indonesia. In Portugal a very broad movement of people came together to call for the end to the Indonesian army-organised massacres in East Timor in September 1999, with the LB being the first to react. Costa said "we will keep this movement in our minds for many years as it was the most important mass movement of my generation". Luis Fazenda, one of the LB's two MPs, said the movement had amounted to almost a spontaneous general strike.
The LB has also been developing its international collaboration with other left forces. Costa said the LB met regularly with the European left parties. "We organised the first European meeting, in Lisbon, last year. There was very broad participation of left-wing currents throughout Europe. There was a second meeting this year with more participation. These are the first steps towards the permanent connection and coordination of left-wing currents in Europe. There are many European initiatives and we will continue to organise and participate in these kind of events.
"We were represented in Porto Alegre, Brazil, for the World Social Forum, and the evaluation we have made of it is that it was a very positive event. We want to participate in it again next year, because it is a big space to discuss the alternatives to the neo-liberal world order. So this year we have had some very good examples of how useful it can be to exchange experiences and problems of the different continents. We are very happy that the Forum continues in Porto Alegre because it is a reference point for the left worldwide with its state and municipal Workers Party governments."