Porto Alegre

Judy Rebick

The social summit held recently in Porte Allegre Brazil seems to have inspired everyone who attended that, in the slogan of the conference, a better world is possible.

But in all the discussion of events at the Social Summit, I have seen little about the inspiring experiment in participatory democracy that the city of Porte Alegre has been living over the last decade. While I couldn't attend the Social Summit, I have had the pleasure of meeting Lula de Silva, the charismatic leader of the Workers Party when he was was passing through Toronto on speaking tours.

Lula, as everyone calls him, is a steelworker with an incredible ability to make complex ideas almost into popular poetry. In Brazil, he is as popular as a rock star.

“The people of the world need to develop a new vision of a fairer society,” he told a Toronto audience a couple of years ago. The democratic participation of people in their society, he said, has to be the centre of that new vision. He calls it social citizenship, a new kind of democracy.

“Do we have democracy only to have the right to cry out in hunger?” he asked. What was the meaning of political democracy in Brazil if so much of the population was struggling just to survive. In a developing country like Brazil where so many live in poverty the simple question has revolutionary implications. In the cities and regions where the PT is in power they have put their ideas into practice involving ordinary citizens in decisions that affect their lives.

Lula says the PT does not have a new road map but they learning from their experience as they go. “Where we are in power, we turn neo-liberalism on its head. That's our starting point,” he explains. “We start from the needs of the people, not the needs of capital.”

In Porto Alegre, citizens actually decide on municipal priorities through the participatory budget (OP). Parallel to the usual city counselors, citizens are elected every year from 16 geographically and socially distinct sectors that handle local problems. In March and April, in the early stages of the OP a progress report on decisions made the previous year is presented and debated by the citizen forums in each sector. They then elect two representatives and two alternates who serve unpaid for one year only on the OP council. Each of the 16 citizens assemblies in addition to electing their representatives on the city wide budget council decide what service and spending priorities they want to see in the coming year. These proposals are forwarded to the municipal council. At the same time the delegates to the city-wide budget council attend training sessions on municipal finances. The process, based on the initial applications from the regional and sectoral assemblies, goes back and forth between municipal bureaucrats, the OP council and then finally the mayor and the municipal council, which has the sole authority to actually adopt the budget. By now we are in mid-July when the legal force of universal suffrage and representative democracy in the persons of the 33 municipal councillors elected for four years meets with the grass roots power of direct democracy embodied in the 40 or so OP councillors supported by hundreds of delegates who have participated in the regional and sectoral forums and some 20,000 citizens who have taken an active part in the various stages of the OP. It is the OP that debates discusses and amends the plan for the new year between October 1 and December. The Municipal Council has the final say but it is understood that they will make only minor changes to the OP proposal.

What is so exciting about the Participatory Budget in Brazil's Gaucho country is the interaction between active citizens, elected politicians and career officials. Instead of playing an advisory role, as do many citizens bodies in our political system, the regional and sectoral assemblies actually discuss and debate budget priorities. In my neighbourhood, for example, we might decide that a new school is more important than improvements to the highway.

Those living and working in the community would decide on the priorities that directly effect our lives. Community interest, not party politics, or personal gain become the centre of decision making. More importantly, instead of complaining about the decisions someone else is making on my behalf, I can choose to become a significant participant in the process for one year or two. I don't have to give up my job and decide on a career in the politics. On the contrary, it is my day to day life in the community that best qualifies me for participation in the deciding priorities for my community.

On the other hand, popular assemblies are not enough. Even if our citizen's assembly decide on the school, perhaps in the next region, they have many more children crowded into a single school. The overall municipal budget has to decide how much money to devote to each project. If citizen's are only involved at the neighbourhood level, then decisions are left to professional politicians and bureaucrats. Electing delegates from the assemblies to a city wide budget council ensures that direct democratic input continues throughout the entire process. The OP process also recognizes that no matter how open and welcoming a direct democracy process is, it will always involve a small minority of citizens so the largest number of citizens participate in the usual fashion of representative democracy. The OP is an example of how direct democracy and representative democracy can work together.