Porto Alegre: a city in the move

Porto Alegre is the capital of the Rio Grande do Sul state, at the extreme south of Brasil. This town is, since 1988 and the victory of the Workers Party at the municipal elections experiencing an original financial management.
A mechanism of participative budget has been established and has permitted to more than 140 000 people until today to be directly involved in the choices of the city expenses. This system has been conceived in order to fight corruption with the control of the population over the power issued from the elections. It allows to change the investment priorities depending on the citizen involvement, which is very important in the poor quarters.
The budget is made by a “representative pyramid”: at the “micro-local” level, the meetings are open to all citizens, who can submit suggestions and elect representatives. These representatives gather in plenary assemblies so as to synthesise the work done in meetings. The Council of the participative budget (COP), at the top of the pyramid, puts in order the priorities at the scale of the city. The COP constitutes the link with the executive, voting a budget draft, which will be transmitted to the municipal government for the last decision.
This democratic procedure has permitted to establish a real budgetary transparency and drew the attention of the population concerning the limits and the possibilities of the public action. Various programs have been made, notably in matter of sanitary infrastructures (drinkable water…), transport (buses and road tarring), mostly in the disadvantaged favelas.
However, the beginning of this project was quite difficult with only 700 people in the meeting the first year (1989), and less than 400 the next two years. Then, the first results having occurred, the portoalegrenses invested themselves more in the budget process to gather almost 20000 citizens in the micro-local meeting in 1998. Nevertheless, the move has weakened a bit recently with the victory at the last municipal elections of 2004 from the socialist candidate, who is slightly less favourable to this system. This experience of participative democracy remains unique in the world and full of lessons. It has motivated the welcome in Porto Alegre of the first World Social Forum (WSF) in 2001, gathering tens of thousands of participants coming from the entire world to debate around the contemporary social questions. The city welcomed the WSF again in 2002, 2003 and 2005, with an increasing success.