As Brazil shifts right, its leftists search for a way forward

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – The victory of Brazil's right-wing presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro, the country's leftist Workers Party, which is now looking for a way to rebuild.

After defining Brazilian politics for much of the past two decades, the party is still ruled by its imprisoned 73-year-old from the center of economic power.

Fernando Haddad, who lost by a 10-percentage point in the Sunday's election.

For millions of Brazilians, the PT, as the Workers Party is known, has become synonymous with corruption and mismanagement. In recent years, we have been in the history of the biggest bribery scandal in the nation's history and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Street crime has also exploded.

The backlash has been severe. Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – whom Barack Obama once dubbed "the most popular politician on earth" – sits in a prison cell, serving a 12-year sentence for graft and money laundering. Lula's hand-picked successor, President Dilma Rousseff, was impeached for fudging public accounts.

Angry Seniors Responded by Throwing Their Support to Bolsonaro, including sizeable numbers of low-income workers, Afro-Brazilians and university students who were long on the PT's core supporters. The bombastic training of the army captain tapped into their fury, vowing to crack down on criminals, be they in the streets or in the halls of Congress.

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Brazilian hip-hop icon Mano Brown chastised party leadership with a star-studded concert and PT rally in Rio de Janeiro just days before Sunday's wipeout.

"There is no reason for us to celebrate," Brown told the crowd, including Haddad and famed singer-songwriters Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque, looked on. If you can not speak the people's language, you're going to lose big. "

'PROJECT FOR POWER'

Corruption in Brazilian politics existed long before the PT was formed in 1980 to unite union workers, artists and intellectuals to help end Brazil's 1964-1985 dictatorship.

All of the country's major political parties, not just the PT, are implicated in the so-called Operation Car Wash investigation that ensnared Lula. PT loyalists say he and Rousseff were victims of a right-wing "blow" that sought to discredit their leadership and social programs that lifted the country's poverty.

But even some PT stalwarts admitted its rise from an opposition party to a ruling on its roots. Horse trading in the capital Brasilia became paramount for the party to stay on top, said Carlos Alberto Libanio Christo, a Roman Catholic priest and founding member of the PT who is known in Brazil as Frei Betto.

"Gradually, the PT traded its project for Brazil in favor of a project for power," said Frei Betto, who spent four years imprisoned during the dictatorship. "

Another major challenge is that the PT is dwarfed by the towering presence of Lula, who still runs the show from jail.

Lula tapped Haddad, the former mayor of Sao Paulo, as his stand-in, a gambit that failed miserably.

Lula loyalists, including Washington Quaquá, the head of the PT in Rio de Janeiro state, are sticking with Haddad despite his resounding defeat.

"Haddad came out of this election a great leader," Quaquá said. "

A militant faction of the PT is pushing for more aggressive leadership. Some grouse that Haddad, a mild-mannered political science professor at the elite University of Sao Paulo, is not tough enough to take on Bolsonaro.

Gleisi Hoffman, currently president of the party, had resisted putting on the ballot box for the first time.

SEEKING SALVATION

The news for the PT is not entirely dismal.

The party won the most seats in the lower house on Sunday. It also took the lead, but it was concentrated in Brazil's poor northeast, a traditional PT stronghold.

After the shock of Bolsonaro 's big win dissipates, the president of Alberto Almeida, the founder of Brasilis, has a political and social badysis firm in Sao Paulo.

"After all, he did not win 45 million votes," Almeida said.

He said the PT's mission will be confronted to a challenge since the beginning of the world.

"In That way, the PT's role is similar to what the Democrats in the US are facing with Trump, "Almeida said.

Haddad reported in Sao Paulo, issuing a rallying cry to a movement in disarray.

"All of us here, who helped build one of the world's largest democracies, must maintain it in the face of provocations and threats," said Haddad. "Have courage. The key to life is courage. "