The Democratic Labour Party ( pt, Partido Democrático Trabalhista, PDT) is a
social-democratic political party in Brazil.
History
The Democratic Labour Party (PDT) was founded in 1979 by left-wing leader
Leonel Brizola as an attempt to reorganise the Brazilian left-wing forces during the end of the
Brazilian military dictatorship. Many of its members, including Brizola, had been active in the historical
Brazilian Labour Party prior to the
1964 coup, which drove into exile or assassinated a number of its prominent members including ousted President
João Goulart. Returning from exile in
Uruguay
Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...
, Brizola originally wanted to reclaim the PTB name for his party, but the military government awarded it to
a more moderate grouping led by
Ivete Vargas, leading to PDT being formed by a large majority of historical PDT members a week later. The PDT joined the
Socialist International
The Socialist International (SI) is a political international or worldwide organisation of political parties which seek to establish democratic socialism
Democratic socialism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing political philosophy that su ...
in 1986. It was the major left-wing party in Brazil until the rise of the
Workers' Party (PT) in
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Ma ...
.
The Socialist Youth, founded in 1981, was originally called Labour Youth. Its name had been changed twice: in 1984, to Socialist Labour Youth, and then in 1985 to Socialist Youth. The intention was to support the group that defended the participation of the party in the Socialist International as well as the change of the party's name to Socialist Party. The latter never happened, partly due to the founding of the
Brazilian Socialist Party.
PDT enjoyed wide, but regionalized electoral success in the 1980s and 1990s, with Brizola winning the governorship of the
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of the same name, Brazil's List of Brazilian states by population, third-most populous state, and the List of largest citi ...
state, becoming the first and only Brazilian to have governed two different states, previously his native
Rio Grande do Sul before the coup and while leading a
civil resistance campaign which had successfully delayed an earlier coup attempt in 1962. Meanwhile, it also elected
Alceu Collares
Alceu de Deus Collares (born September 12, 1927 in Bagé) is a Brazilian politician and lawyer. He was the Governor of Rio Grande do Sul state (1991–95), and was also a member of the Chamber of Deputies and Mayor of Porto Alegre
Porto Al ...
for the latter's governorship, the first Black Brazilian governor in history.
The best result of the party in a presidential election was reached by historical leader Brizola, with 17% of the votes in the first round of the 1989 presidential elections. However, Brizola lost to rival Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by a margin of 0.5%, stopping him from facing the
right-wing candidate,
Fernando Collor de Mello, in the runoff. Brizola lost two more additional bids in 1994, and
1998, as Lula's running mate. In
2002 it launched
Ciro Gomes, but later supported Lula in the runoffs as he won in his fourth presidential attempt.
In the
2002 legislative elections, the party won 21 out of the 513 seats of the Chamber of Deputies and 5 out of the 81 seats of the Senate. Its candidate also won the gubernatorial election in
Amapá. Differences with PT, which had accumulated over the 90s as they disputed for similar voter bases, led to an early breakway from the Lula administration, and PDT entered the opposition.
In the local
elections of October 2004, the party elected 300 mayors, 3252 city councilors, earning 5.5 million votes. Brizola's death in June that year resulted in a decade of stagnation.
After the political crisis involving the government of Lula, the PDT has received the affiliation of several left-wing leaders from the president's party, the
Workers' Party (PT), that disagree with the government policies, including the former Minister of Education,
Cristovam Buarque
Cristovam Ricardo Cavalcanti Buarque (; born February 20, 1944) is a Brazilian university professor and member of Cidadania. He was a senator for the Federal District from 2003 to 2019.
Biography
Buarque graduated in mechanical engineering fro ...
. Cristovam faced president Lula in the first round of the
2006 National Elections, reaching 4th place (with 2.538.834 or 2.64% of the votes). At the legislative elections of October 1, 2006, the party experienced slight gains, winning 24 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. The PDT held onto the governorship of
Amapá, and won a surprising victory in the gubernatorial election in
Maranhão, which however was overturned due to electoral irregularities in 2009. At the
2010 elections
The following elections occurred in the year 2010.
{{TOC right
* National electoral calendar 2010
* Local electoral calendar 2010
* 2010 United Nations Security Council election
Africa
* 2010 Burkinabé presidential election
* 2010 Burundian Sen ...
, the PDT made gains in Parliament, winning 28 representatives, and it will have 4 Senate seats. It did not win any governorships, however, and only made it to one gubernatorial runoff, in
Alagoas
Alagoas (, ) is one of the 27 federative units of Brazil and is situated in the eastern part of the Northeast Region. It borders: Pernambuco (N and NW); Sergipe (S); Bahia (SW); and the Atlantic Ocean (E). Its capital is the city of Maceió. ...
.
The PDT was the first party of president
Dilma Rousseff (now in PT). Although the PDT voted against the
impeachment of Rousseff, six deputies voted in favor, resulting in the suspension of five deputies and the expulsion of the sixth, Giovani Cherini.
In 2018, the party announced
Ciro Gomes, former Minister of Finance (1994-1995) and governor from the state of Ceará (1991-1994), to run for the presidency, receiving 12.47% of the votes in the first round, the second highest by a PDT candidate, second only to Leonel Brizola's bid, in 1989. Despite being against the winner of the first round, and the eventual president elected, Jair Bolsonaro, he did not formally endorse Fernando Haddad. It launched Gomes for president again in 2022.
Ideology
The PDT combines a pro-labour and
social-democratic orientation with
nationalism
Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the State (polity), state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a in-group and out-group, group of peo ...
and elements of
democratic socialism.
Apart from a small truce in 1998, the PT and PDT had a rivalry for more than 20 years for the leadership of Brazilian left. The PDT eventually lost the battle and became an ally of the PT on the national level. The alliance, however, was always uneasy; the party always had a strong dissident wing led by the former
Federal District governor, former ''petista'' and senator for the Federal District
Cristovam Buarque
Cristovam Ricardo Cavalcanti Buarque (; born February 20, 1944) is a Brazilian university professor and member of Cidadania. He was a senator for the Federal District from 2003 to 2019.
Biography
Buarque graduated in mechanical engineering fro ...
. This internal movement was always ousted and disenfranchised by the national chairman of the party, Carlos Lupi, who was always loyal to the PT government. However, many dissidents left the PDT for other parties, such as the
Brazilian Socialist Party,
Popular Socialist Party,
Brazilian Social Democracy Party or
Socialism and Liberty Party.
With the arrival of Ciro Gomes and the crisis within the PT, PDT sought to regain the leadership of the left in the post-2014 elections. The move was partially successful: the PDT made significant gains in the municipal elections of 2016 and won more mayoral races than any party of the left apart from the PSB, while PT's own seats fell by 60%.
Ciro Gomes, despite having a comparatively much smaller campaign and multiple deals on PT's part to sway other parties, mainly PSB, away from PDT,
managed to finish in third place. In the runoff,
Fernando Haddad, supported by former President
Lula, then in jail, expected support from Ciro but this was ignored, and PDT instead assumed a position of neutrality. From 2019 onwards, PDT kept struggling with PT for leadership of the left.
Logo
The current logo is the
fist and rose, based on the version created by
José María Cruz Novillo for the
Spanish Socialist Workers Party in 1977.
In the logo introduced in 2021, the leafs and stem bear the main colours of the
flag of Brazil (yellow, blue and green): party president Carlos Lupi stated that this was in response to the political use of the national flag by President
Jair Bolsonaro.
Organisation
The party is organised in state and municipal directories and also in cooperational social movements, such as the Black Movement, the Labour Woman Association, the Labour Syndicate Union, the Socialist Youth and the Green Labour Movement. Its national directory is composed of over 250 members, while its national executive is composed of 21 members. The cooperational
social movements
A social movement is a loosely organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a social or political
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or ...
have their own statutes and nationwide organisation
Electoral results
Presidential elections
Legislative elections
Important party leaders
*
Leonel Brizola (1922–2004), the brother-in-law of
President João Goulart, Brizola formed the Democratic Labour Party in 1979 in an attempt to reorganize the left-wing of the country after the last military sponsored President
João Figueiredo brought an end to the political persecution of the left.
*
Ciro Gomes, lawyer and politician, former governor of
Ceará.
*
Doutel de Andrade, Leader of the PTB Bench in the Chamber of Deputies in the Government of João Goulart (1961-1964), presided over PDT during the 1980s.
*
Darcy Ribeiro
Darcy Ribeiro (October 26, 1922 – February 17, 1997) was a Brazilian anthropologist, historian, sociologist, author and politician. His ideas have influenced several scholars of Brazilian and Latin American studies. As Minister of Educat ...
, an
anthropologist, one of the founders of the
University of Brasília.
*
Abdias do Nascimento
Abdias do Nascimento (March 14, 1914 – May 23, 2011) was a prominent African Brazilian scholar, artist, and politician. Also a poet, dramatist, and Pan-African activist, Nascimento created the Black Experimental Theater (1944) and the Black Ar ...
, black intellectual and activist, he would become Senator in the 1990s by the PDT.
*
Carlos Alberto de Oliveira, a former student leader in the early 1960s and a black activist, "Caó" was the author, in 1989, of Law 7716, the "''Anti-Racism Law"''
*
Alceu Collares
Alceu de Deus Collares (born September 12, 1927 in Bagé) is a Brazilian politician and lawyer. He was the Governor of Rio Grande do Sul state (1991–95), and was also a member of the Chamber of Deputies and Mayor of Porto Alegre
Porto Al ...
, first Black Brazilian governor
*
Jackson Lago, former mayor of
São Luís and governor of
Maranhão.
*
Carlos Lupi, current party president
*
André Figueiredo, economist and former
leader of the opposition
The Leader of the Opposition is a title traditionally held by the leader of the largest political party not in government, typical in countries utilizing the parliamentary system form of government. The leader of the opposition is typically se ...
*
Aldo Rebelo, former Minister of Defence and
President of the
Chamber of Deputies of Brazil
References
External links
*
PDT's Socialist Youth websiteSocialist International
{{Authority control
1979 establishments in Brazil
Centre-left parties in South America
Foro de São Paulo
Full member parties of the Socialist International
Labour parties
Political parties established in 1979
Social democratic parties in Brazil