The (''Partido Socialismo e Liberdade'', P-SOL) is a
Brazil ian political party. Among the party leaders are
Heloísa Helena (
Alagoas ), federal deputies
Luciana Genro (
Rio Grande Do Sul ) and
Babá (
Pará ), and a number of well-known Brazilian left-wing leaders and intellectuals, such as Milton Temer, Carlos Nelson Coutinho, Ricardo Antunes, Francisco de Oliveira, João Machado, Pedro Ruas and others.
PSOL was formed after Heloísa Helena, Luciana Genro, Babá and João Fontes (also a federal deputy, now a member of the
Democratic Labour Party , PDT) were expelled from the
Workers' Party , after voting against the neo-liberal pension reform proposed by Lula. After collecting more than 438,000 signatures, P-SOL became Brazil's 29th officially recognized political party, the first to do so by this method.
P-SOL currently has one senator and three federal deputies in the
National Congress Of Brazil . The representative of P-SOL in the Senate was not elected - he was the substitute of
Ana Júlia , who renounced to her last four years of mandate after she was elected governor of
Pará . At the time he was chosen her eventual substitute, he was a Worker's Party member and P-SOL did not exist.
P-SOL launched Heloísa Helena to run for president in 2006 elections. The vice-presidential candidate was intellectual
United Socialist Workers' Party (PSTU) and
Communist Brazilian Communist Party (PCB).
The alliance was extended to gubernatorial elections. In
Minas Gerais , for instance,
Vanessa Portugal , from the PSTU, ran for governor with P-SOL's support, although not with PCB's. Prominent P-SOL gubernatorial candidates were Plínio de Arruda Sampaio in
São Paulo , Milton Temer in
Rio De Janeiro and Roberto Robaina in
Rio Grande Do Sul . However, they were all defeated.
Heloísa Helena finished the presidential race in the third place, receiving 6.5 million votes throughout the country (6.85% of the valid votes). Three federal deputies managed to get re-elected.
