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Brazilian Democratic Labor Party
Democratic Labor Party
Brizola founded the social democratic-oriented Democratic Labor
Party (Partido Democrático Trabalhista--PDT) in May 1980
after losing the PTB label to Ivette Vargas. Over the ensuing fifteen
years, many PDT members migrated to other parties. In 1990 the PDT
elected three governors (Brizola included), five senators, and forty-seven
federal deputies and became the third largest party in Congress.
In 1994 Brizola placed fifth for president and was defeated by Enéas
Carneiro in Rio
de Janeiro, thus ending his forty-seven-year political career.
The PDT elected only two governors, four senators, and thirty-three
federal deputies that year.
Despite his massive defeat in 1994, Brizola refused to relinquish
personal control of the party and tried to impose a systematic opposition
posture on the congressional delegation, although the two PDT governors
favored a more flexible position vis-à-vis the Cardoso government.
Both the very dynamic governor of Paraná, Jaime Lerner, and
Dante de Oliveira, governor of Mato Grosso, left the PDT in 1997.
Data as of April 1997
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