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The Plebiscite accomplished its aims in spite of the stance taken by the great majority of the media. Instead of informing public opinion, these opted to combat the Plebiscite, to misrepresent its aims, and to deny its organizers coverage. For its part, the federal government launched crude attacks on the initiative, pressured the sponsor organizations and blackmailed civil society with false information nurtured by obscurantist prejudice against any ideas at odds with the official position.

They do not want society to debate these matters, because they know that from the debate alternatives will arise. This attitude is revealing of a characteristic more and more in evidence in the economic model introduced in Brazil: for all its support in the media, in business and financial circles, and among so-called "opinion leaders", the model will not stand up to controversy in a climate of freely expressed ideas. The spokesmen of the "neoliberal one-truth" consider any and all criticism as "threatening" and "destabilizing"; they argue that everyone should support the canons of neo-liberal policy in one great "national pact" which will uphold the rights of the elites in detriment to the rights of the majority.

For the last decade Brazil has adopted this economic orientation based on external dependence and indebtedness, and sustained by blackmail according to which any interruption of capital inflows will precipitate collapse. Ironically, the international agencies feel that Brazil represents greater risk for foreign investors than Colombia. It is not initiatives like the Plebiscite that place the country in jeopardy, but rather the financialization of the economy, which subjects it to the "humours" of international banking. In recent years, several countries have refused IMF and World Bank prescriptions, which are being criticized even by sectors within these same international institutions.

The external debt is an extremely serious problem, even though the present government, just like the military government of the 70s, prefers to present our debt as "credit". The debt - in the words of official spokesmen - is being "perfectly administered" thanks to a policy of high interest rates, galloping trade liberalization, privatization of public enterprises and increasingly precarious labour relations. In other words, we are in a situation of social moratorium, expressed as an enormous default on all commitments to education, health, the value of the minimum wage, decent pensions, the right to employment, agrarian reform, the indigenous peoples' rights and the other rights and constitutional guarantees of the majority of our people.

In the course of the 90s, the problem of indebtedness was aggravated by massive growth in private external debt. A large number of major entrepreneurs swapped debt contracted abroad at low rates of interest for internal debt bonds yielding stratospheric rates of interest. In short, a large part of the private debt was nationalized. The mushrooming internal public debt is thus linked to this process of financial speculation which is hampering economic growth. For all these reasons, the Plebiscite has come at the right time, in the right place, and with the right focus.

The Plebiscite is focussed so as to criticize the economic model applied in Brazil. When called on to express an opinion on the debts and the IMF agreement, a considerable portion of the public took a position on matters that the government prefers to reserve to its specialists. The Plebiscite made it clear that indebtedness is not a technical matter to be debated exclusively by the theoreticians of economics and finance. The technical decisions result from political options which, in the last analysis, mean either paying the financial debts or paying the social debts.

The Plebiscite also made it clear that a just cause, capable of mobilizing popular organizations and, above all, millions of anonymous men and women citizens, does not require enormous financial backing. In material terms, we ran a modest campaign without the benefit of channels on a scale appropriate to an undertaking of this scope. What it lacked in apparatus, though, was offset by tens of thousands of volunteers, even in areas remote from the big towns, who spontaneously and enthusiastically organized debates, produced their own publicity materials, printed voting cards and arranged ballot boxes.

For the organizations working to bring about the National Plebiscite on the External Debt, the social debts come before the financial debts. Our national priority must be to guarantee decent work, land, housing, education, health, wages and pensions for our people. It was precisely the discussion over the social and environmental debts, their causes and the means to pay them that brought into question the IMF agreement, external indebtedness and internal indebtedness. In 1998, the symposium "External debt, implications and prospects" was held in Brasilia at the initiative of the Christian churches. This drew on and updated the wealth of experience accumulated in mobilizations against the debts in the 70s and 80s.

The following year, 2,000 people, including representatives from 14 countries and numerous social and political movements, took part in the "Tribunal on the External Debt" in Rio de Janeiro. The Tribunal handed down a "Verdict" condemning the debts and pronounced in favour of engagement in the international mobilization to cancel them, in which we now participate through the Jubilee South campaign. Finally, in 2000, we held the National Plebiscite on the External Debt. The Plebiscite was not limited to saying "No" to the debt, "No" to speculation and "No" to the IMF agreement.

The Plebiscite also represents a "Yes" to a different model of economy, one of whose fundamental values is to promote life. Our economy and our society cannot be left to depend on attracting foreign capital. The bases of the present model make indebtedness synonymous with domination. Either we change this situation or we continue to watch the greater part of our society fall victim to social crisis, unemployment, low wages, lack of public services, violence and all the other ills we know so well.

It comes as no surprise that the lords of the debt, many of them Brazilian, decry us as "defaulters" and threaten us with retaliation. Look at history: the colonizers said Independence was the road to chaos. The slave owners said Abolition would bankrupt Brazil's economy. The imperial powers, like England last century and the United States today, have always boasted that, for the colonies to develop, their only course was to submit to the metropolis.

The big land owners have always said land reform will lead to bankruptcy. Those responsible for environmental devastation, very often financed by external credit, say it is the inevitable price of "progress". In the case of the debt, the discourse is repeated. Not that that leaves us any better off. So nothing could be fairer, more natural, more necessary or more urgent than to break the chains that bind us. The external debt is in large measure illegal, immoral and has already been paid several times over. Nonetheless, it goes on growing and goes on being paid, as if the aim was to turn Brazil into a heavily-indebted poor country.

The external and internal debts are mechanisms that concentrate income, wealth and power in the hands of minority - but powerful - groups in our society. External and internal indebtedness are neither natural phenomena, nor are they acceptable. They are produced deliberately by social sectors that benefit from them. They only continue to exist because society as a whole, consciously or unconsciously, allows them to. We are continuing to mobilize, now for an Audit of the Debt and an Official Plebiscite, as well as in formulating an alternative model of economic and social development and in Brazil's participation in the international Jubilee South campaign.

The deeper meaning of the National Plebiscite on the External Debt, held symbolically in the week when Brazil commemorates its independence, is to draw up an indictment of the exploitation to which the greater part of our people is subjected. May this cry be heard in all the corners of Brazil and the world, and may it find fresh vigour in the continuing fight for a Brazil with equality, democracy and life.

Life before the Debt!

The promoter organizations of the
National Plebiscite on the External Debt

SEMI-FINAL RESULTS OF THE BRAZILIAN PLEBISCITE (September 20, 2000)

6.030.329 people voted, or 5,7% of all Brazilian voters (data from the Electoral Supreme Court for 1998)

Question 1: Should the Brazilian government maintain the present agreement with the International Monetary Fund?

5.646.862 answered NO, 280.442 answered YES, 76.574 voted blank and 26.451 voted null.

Question 2: Should Brazil go on paying the external debt without holding a public audit of the debt, as called for by the 1988 Constitution?

5.765.954 answered NO, 182.462 answered YES, 57.954 voted blank and 23.959 voted null.

Question 3: Should the federal, state and municipal governments go on using a large part of the public budget to pay the internal debt to speculators?

5.768.563 answered NO, 158.995 answered YES, 80.481 voted blank and 22.290 voted null.

Translated from Portuguese by Peter Lenny for PACS-REDE BRASIL

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