To all fellow parties and organizations:
We present below a brief report on the successful debates that took place during the 9th National Conference of the Communist Party of Brazil, concluded by the end of June in Brasília.
Fraternally,
Secretary of International Relations of the Central Committee of PCdoB.

PCdoB concludes successful National Conference

The Communist Party of Brazil held its 9th National Conference on June 26-29. Called with the objective of updating the party debate on the new political reality inaugurated with the electoral victory in the past elections, the Conference decided to define as the core of the communists' tactics the work for the success of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration "in fulfilling a democratic national project of national development with a progressive character, under the leadership of new political and social forces that are democratic and popular", according to an excerpt of the resolution.

The Conference's opening act took place with the presence of many authorities, leaders of popular, student, women and union organizations, leaders of political parties and the ambassadors of China, Vietnam, Cuba and Palestine.

On behalf of President Lula da Silva, the leader of the Workers Party in the House of Representatives, Nelson Pellegrino, highlighted the fact that the President of the Republic considers PCdoB as an important and fundamental ally. "The Party was our partner from the very beginning of the electoral campaign in 1989 and it still is our partner on the daily political process". The President of the Republic's representative affirmed that the government will not disappoint the Party and the Brazilian people. The president of the House of Representatives, João Paulo Cunha (from the Workers Party), also present in the occasion, stressed that the proposals of PCdoB's Conference can contribute highly to the elaboration of a new policy for Brazil. "I am sure we will make the project of Lula's administration work", he said.

Minister José Dirceu, one of the main leader of the Workers Party, was also present and talked about the "historical importance of PCdoB": "Without PCdoB we would not be where we are today". He described the course of the alliance between the two parties from the '80s to the victory in October last year. To the Minister, "the fight for national sovereignty is decisive", but also "very complex" since it depends on alliances among different classes and presents itself on a specific form in each country and, a fact of greater importance, it is developed presently under the hegemony of the United States.

Filled with catchwords, the act had an emotional tone during the homage paid to comrade João Amazonas, historical leader of PCdoB, who passed away in May last year.

On the next day, the 332 delegates and the 32 invitees begun the circumstantiated debate on the political guideline the Party of communists is to follow in "building the new era" of Lula's administration according to the Conference's principle. The participants came from all 27 states of the country. They belong to different generations of communists and come from various strata of the working people. After an ardent debate, the delegates unanimously approved the document "A new era for the Party-the search for the success of Lula's administration in fulfilling a democratic project of national development".

By the end of the tasks, the Central Committee met, according to PCdoB's Constitution, to ratify the resolutions of the National Conference.
We publish bellow excerpts of the final intervention of the 9th National Conference by Renato Rabelo, president of the Communist Party of Brazil.

A stronger and more united PCdoB with the 9th Conference

With a notable victory, the 9th National Conference of the Communist Party of Brazil comes to its end. The resolution "A new era for the Party-the search for the success of Lula's administration in fulfilling a democratic project of national development" was unanimously approved after more than two months of fruitful and creative debates.
The approved resolution is the expression of the force and thinking of the party collective. It is a fundamental ground for the orientation of the Party in the present stage it goes through. It unfolds a new reality and defines the general tactics.

The debate that took place in that 9th Conference approached fundamental issues of our action and perspective and involved the development and application of the party line. The approved document is a fundamental ground to guide the Party in the new situation.

In this plenary, I see Brazil before me. Comrades from all the regions of the country participate in a creative and consequent debate that presents important issues. They care about the identity of the Party. What is the reason of being part of the Communist Party? The ground to our theoretical basis is Marxism-Leninism, which unveils capitalism and defines a new philosophical and economic thought for a new society.

The Communist Party is the party of the proletarian revolution with a mission of making real the new socialist society. PCdoB is the expression of the Marxist-Leninist line on the present-day conditions in Brazil, summarized in the expression of a modern party of renovated socialism-that has been our effort, especially since the Party's 8th Congress, held in 1992. In the course of his life, the contribution of comrade João Amazonas to our Party was always made with a view to put it in the course of political events, developing a revolutionary theory in the sense of the great ideal of communism.

More than 150 years after the publication of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Marx and Engels, 132 years after the Paris Commune-a great rehearsal of the proletarian revolution-and 120 years after Marx passed away, where are we? More than a century went by and capitalism is still fully effective. It is a system that is evidently on a historical downward trend, though its domain still encompasses the globe. The first socialist experiences, which lasted almost a century, results of glorious journeys and achievements of the proletariat, did not take place according to Karl Marx's predictions. The experiences of building a new society in the 20th century suffered great defeats with the end of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

Today, the countries that wave high the banner socialism had to perform important strategic and tactical maneuvers along their way in order to avoid retreats in their main objectives.

The process of a political, economic and social constitution being overcome by another, a new one, is a prolonged and tortuous process full of zigzags, variables and inconstancies, subject to chance. It is the concrete class struggle. In Soviet Russia, the most importance experience in trying to build socialism, life has shown that the enterprise of revolutionarily transforming society was much more complex and prolonged than imagined. As João Amazonas said, we suffered a strategic defeat that is historically symbolized by the end of the Soviet Union.

That strategic defeat imposed a new reality in which we are now living. In order to support the perspective and keep on fighting, we have had to adapt our objectives and establish commitments so that we do not lose sight of our greater goals. The communist parties that are not in power had to reaffirm their identities and, at the same time, execute significant changes in order to be up to the present reality. That movement of contemporaneity is effective and consists on building the revolutionary strategy and tactics and also on updating the profile of the communist parties with a view to reach a new stage in the struggle for socialism. Under that situation, our commitment to principles isolates us and deviates us from the real course of events. On the other hand, we cannot deprive ourselves of our characteristics and lose the essential communist trait that is the reason of our existence.

In Brazil, the political turnover that took place with the victory of Lula for the Presidency of the Republic and the current transition take place amid that contemporaneous reality, while the revolutionary forces assume a strategic defensive position according to the particularities of our political process, where new political and social forces achieved the central administration. The resolution approved in that Conference tries to grasp the singularity of that moment: a "smooth" transition characterized by gradual changes conducted by an administration that lives between the duality of continuity and change; the country is subject to heavy domestic and foreign restrictions as it is still subject to an agreement made with the International Monetary Fund-the third one signed by former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Under those conditions, Lula accepted the challenge of recomposing the governability conditions in a situation characterized by institutional crisis and insolvency. We must bear in mind that, under the present balance of forces, the government had to maintain a conservative economic policy and persistently works for the formation of a new political majority. At the same time, Lula's administration must define clearly the new model to be followed, creating conditions and gathering forces for the implantation of a new strategy of national development. It is necessary, therefore, to reach a consensus and mobilize for an alternative proposal to neoliberalism. That is the challenge: having a clear path to follow in a journey that may take a long time. Our Party must play its role of an advanced force, contributing to the success of that debate that opens the way to change. In the transitional period, the pace of economic building is not automatically linked to the pace of political transition. We live, therefore, under a situation where the old still persists and the new cannot thrive, especially in the economic field. That may be observed in several historical moments of transition, including in other countries.

In dependent countries, under an international situation of extensive internationalization of capital and the predominance of a single-sided world order characterized by economic centralization in the main capitalist countries, the role of the national struggle becomes central. The so-called peripheral countries lost the autonomy to manage their economies and are subject to ultraliberal policies, many are submitted to conditions imposed by the IMF and the World Bank. The struggle for sovereignty-along with the struggle for democracy and social justice-may acquire a great expression, gathering around it the majority of the nation. Lula's administration, in that aspect, has done a notable work for the integration of South America, for strengthening Mercosur and for the search of strategic international partnerships in order to achieve a sovereign development.

The Political Resolution of the 9th Conference defines that the political connection in the relation between the Party and the government and the people has a solid ground: the party program. Nevertheless, in order to apply the Party Program for the transition to socialism, it is necessary to develop conditions and accumulate political and organizational forces, which today consist of a medium that will approximate us to our programmatic goals-the victory of Lula's administration in fulfilling the changes.

Therefore, it is by means of a front-based program-in this case now a government program-that the Party may get closer to its strategic and programmatic objectives and connect to the people at the present stage of the political battle.
As long as the reforms planned by the government are concerned, we have to work so that they meet the objectives of defending the national sovereignty, the democratization of the country, the people's rights and retaking development. In the Reform of the Social Security System presented by the government, which is already in the National Congress, the Party proposed changes in the original project, presenting six amendments with a view to develop common positions with the administration's supporting forces. Therefore we were not only trying to make a point, since it would not change anything in the original proposal. On the contrary, it is an attempt to gather conditions to reach a conclusion that is negotiated by the government, its supporting political forces and the workers' organizations.

The Communist Party of Brazil is called to play an even more important role in the national political life-and that is the way it is going to be! The Party is now more united and with better conditions to stand up to the great challenges we face today.

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*President of PCdoB, final intervention of the 9th National Conference of the Communist Party of Brazil, Brasília, June 29.