AS EXPECTED, the Brazilian military regime has taken a battering at the polls. With the final results still to come in, the government party, the PDS, looks like having only 12 million votes, against 18 million for the other parties. Most of these have gone to the main bourgeois opposition party.
Workers Party (PT) faring slightly worse than expected.
This apparent defeat for the government despite manipulation the election process by the media, and probably fraud many areas. As excontro of 12 VUL DI governments. of Congress, and of the elec toral college due to choose President (General)
Figueiredo's successor 1984.
This is because of electoral weighting against the industrial cities, where ten times as many votes are needed to clect one federal deputy as in the backward rural areas where votes are easily bought by powerful their friends.
The PT's argument that in themselves the elections would change nothing seems well confirmed The biggest gainer, the PMDB, should have nine governorships, including the industrial cenHICS 01 Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais. This party 1. the AUCTIOT DEE old MDB. the one and only 'official opposition party created the military when dissolved previous parties after seiz power in the 1964 LUUD. the PMDB, with the New It is led by a hotchliberal businessmen and the collapse of the Brazilian "miracle', want a bit more 'their cake is baked and sliced.
like the MDB before it, which in the mid-seventies became a focus for anti-dictatorship votes, the PMDB has been able to pick up a very large share of the popular vote, claiming that this would be the only 'useful vote against the regime.
Lula The PT's own vote has been less than they hoped for, but is in no way disastrous the bourgeois press is making out Lula looks ake havins milton votes, in the elec- cent, or some 1.3 tion for governor of Sao Paulo against an expected 12-15 percent. In the other areas, the vote has been lower, SCOUT 2-3 per cent, but only 1-2 per cent below what was expected.
The PT will probably end up with about 15 scats in the National Assembly, which may actually be a PT leader Lula more manageable number than the thirty odd hoped for in some over-euphoric moments.
Just before the elections an editorial in the revolutionary marxisi Em Tempo, pointed out the enormous step forward which the very existence of the PT represented for the independent organisation and class consciousness of the Brazilian working class. concluded that *the PT's vote will give a rough idea of the number of people who have alread reached this level of awareness'. What the clear that such class awareness is still confined to a minority of working people, particularly con centrated in the big industrial centres like Sao Paulo and a few areas of military struggle in the countryside The most unexpected phenomenon in these elections has been the victory of Leonel Brizola as governor of Rio de Janeiro, the country's second industrial city.
Brizola and his tim democratic couple of months ago. The Rio. electorate was