MST considers rejecting invitation to join Lula’s Conselhão – 04/24/2023 – Panel

The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) is discussing rejecting the invitation to join the Council, which should be created by the Lula government (PT) in May. The reason is dissatisfaction with Alexandre Padilha, Minister of Institutional Relations, responsible for the composite body that advises the president and is composed of figures and reference groups from civil society.

For landless leaders, especially in Bahia and Pernambuco, Padilha’s criticisms of property invasions show that he chose one side, whereas the body should be plural. The Council brings together representatives of diverse and often antagonistic social groups, such as businessmen, trade unionists, ruralists, the landless, teachers, student representatives, among others.

The background to the debate is Lula’s irritation with the movement’s strategy.

On May 18, Padilha said he “vehemently condemns any act that damages productive areas and processes”. On Friday (21), he added that he believes that “the movement and other movements have other forms of struggle that can win over society even more for such an important cause that is the cause of agrarian reform, family farming, food production in our country”.

MST representatives also point to the minister’s alleged lack of commitment to barring the MST’s CPI, which should be installed in the Chamber, and the difficulty of dialogue, which would have happened only through the press.

They also attribute to Padilha part of the government’s slowness in making changes in the command of the state superintendencies of Incra (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform), demanded by the movement since the beginning of the year and carried out only in April.

The assessment is that other ministers, such as Paulo Teixeira (Agrarian Development), Marcio Macedo (General Secretariat of the Presidency) and Fernando Haddad (Finance) sought to talk and showed receptivity and openness, although, in the case of the first, the differences have been big.

According to them, the dissatisfaction with Padilha is echoed in the trade union centrals and in wings of the PT and other leftist parties.

A member of the Workers’ Party movement, Misa Boito wrote an article in which she criticized Padilha’s speeches about the MST and demanded “more vehemence in seeking to achieve the goals we assumed with the working class when we founded our party”.

She also questions whether Padilha’s condemnation of any act that damages productive processes is a statement against strikes in the city and countryside and recalls that the PT emerged from demonstrations of this type in the ABC region in the 1970s.

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