It has been a long time since they were so few in number: at 1er January 2021, only 183 candidates affiliated with the Workers’ Party (PT) and winners in municipal elections in their respective cities will be sworn in to take up their post as mayor. This is 71 less than four years ago, in the last local poll. A sharp drop of 28%.
By losing more than a quarter of its town halls, the PT is seen (with President Jair Bolsonaro) as the big loser in the last municipal elections. The most powerful leftist formation in Latin America, founded by ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his comrades four decades ago and which ruled Brazil for thirteen years (2003-2016), appears today in plagued by a deep crisis, just two years before the next presidential election in 2022.
Judge: the PT is now only the 11e party of Brazil in number of municipalities that it controls, in a country which counts a little more than 5,500. For the first time since the end of the dictatorship, it will not govern any more any regional capital. The “ptistes” have achieved historically low municipal scores in several cities that were once bastions: 8.66% in Sao Paulo, 4.01% in Rio Branco (Acre, Amazonia) or even a tiny 1.88% in Belo Horizonte (Minas Gerais).
Surrounded on all sides
The party is now doubly threatened and surrounded on all sides. On the left first, by small alternative formations in full growth, such as the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL). Born from a split with the PT in 2004, the latter now thrives among the youth of large urban centers and this year succeeded in winning the town hall of Belem (Para, Amazonia) and placing its candidate, Guilherme Boulos, coordinator of the Movement homeless workers (MTST), in the second round of municipal elections in Sao Paulo.
But the PT is also threatened on its right, and this by two formations with the more centrist line: the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) and the Labor Democratic Party (PDT), led by Ciro Gomes, ex-minister, third man of the last presidential and slayer of “lulism”. The two parties made a fruitful alliance in the municipal elections and succeeded in winning in the big cities of the Northeast, such as Recife, Maceio, Fortaleza or Aracaju… so many places where the PT had obtained its best national scores in the presidential election.
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