Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil (otherwise known as President Lula). Photograph: David Levene/guardian.co.uk
Dripping with sweat and stood before a sea of fluttering red flags, the man thrust two hands into the air, like a rock star saluting his fans.
It was the early hours of 28 October 2002 and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s newly elected president, had come to address tens of thousands of ecstatic supporters, just hours after becoming the first working class leader in his country’s history. “I promise you that I will do all a human being is capable of doing,” Lula told the thronging crowds who had gathered on Avenida Paulista, São Paulo’s answer to Oxford Street, to celebrate the victory. “I will do all that is possible for our people to start smiling once more, for there to be new hope and for the economy to start growing again.”
Almost eight years after Lula made history in central São Paulo, many believe he has achieved just that: Brazil’s economy has grow, emerging from the global financial crunch faster and healthier than most, and the smiles are returning to Brazilian faces across this vast South American nation. During Lula’s two terms in power government coffers have swollen with profits from the commodities boom and an increasingly diverse export portfolio, poverty levels have been slashed and the middle-class has become the majority for the first time in Brazilian history.
“Lula’s legacy is a ’silent revolution’,” says Denise Parana, whose biography of Lula, Lula, the Son of Brazil, inspired the recent multimillion dollar biopic of the same name. “Thirty-one million Brazilians have joined the middle classes and 20 million have left behind a position of absolute poverty. For the first time in the history of Brazil, the country has been governed for all social classes and not merely for the elite. At the same time our economy and our democracy have strengthened. The Brazilian people have gained self-esteem and made their voice heard.”
“We’ve taken very important steps in the social sector, mainly in universalising access to education, substantial improvements in … the health sector, and obviously income distribution, especially during Lula’s [time in] office,” adds Felipe Góes, Rio de Janeiro’s development secretary, pointing particularly to the Bolsa Familia, a benefit system by which impoverished families are offered financial incentives to keep their children in school.
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s long neglected cultural capital, massive federal investments, part of Lula’s so-called Growth Acceleration Program or PAC, have allowed the state government to begin a major investment drive in the city’s impoverished and violence-ridden favelas.
Even Brazil’s business leaders, initially nervous about a former union leader who once railed against the IMF coming to power, have been pleasantly surprised by Lula’s restrained pursuit of orthodox economic policy.
“The current government is responding to the 21st-century in a surprising way,” says Eduardo Eugênio Gouvêa Vieira, president of Rio de Janeiro’s industry federation Firjan. “If you compare the actions of president Lula with his campaign promises you will notice a big difference between them. He understood that it was necessary to keep inflation away to have higher incomes and more consumption.”
Lula’s pragmatism, matched with his much-hyped charisma, has helped the Brazilian president achieve almost unprecedented approval ratings, despite the repeated corruption scandals that have dogged members of his government.
“He is absolutely charismatic,” says Parana, who first met Lula while working on his failed 1989 election campaign. “It’s incredible. He’s a seducer. He has the power to convince somebody of something without a fight, without direct confrontation.”
Such charisma, argues Parana, has allowed a one-time peanut vendor and factory worker to undergo a remarkable transformation into a globetrotting and highly respected international figurehead who boasts one of the highest approval ratings on earth and is now touted as a future head of the World Bank. “I always believed that one day Lula would have a great significance on the world stage – along the lines of Lech Walesa,” says Parana. “Today I see that Lula has gone even further.”
But with president Lula soon to exit the presidential stage, the question on everybody’s lips is: what next?
This October when Brazil holds its presidential elections Lula will not be on the ballot sheet, despite continuing to enjoy an approval rating of over 70%. Having served the maximum of two consecutive terms as president, his rule is nearly at an end.
Instead Brazilians are likely to be offered a choice between Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s favoured candidate who is currently Brazil’s chief of staff and a former left-wing guerrilla, and José Serra, currently the governor of São Paulo and a veteran politician from the centre-right PSDB party who lost out to Lula in the 2002 election.
Views are mixed as to how Lula’s Workers’ party, the PT, and his country will fare without the man who critics call the “bearded toad” at the helm. “We are entering a complicated period: the pre-election period. For the first time in a long period, Lula won’t be a candidate and that is a big difference,” admits Vieira, the Firjan president.
“Without the figure of Lula [on the ballot paper] you are dealing with a great unknown,” agrees Fernando Barros e Silva, a political commentator from Brazil’s Folha de São Paulo newspaper. “[José] Serra is a leader with a more orthodox trajectory. He has disputed many elections in the past, his name has been publicly scrutinised before by the Brazilian voter. He’s been an MP, a senator, a mayor, a state governor.”
“Dilma [Rousseff] is the greater unknown. Dilma has never fought an election in her life. Not one.”
Barros e Silva points out, however, that “the consensus of fiscal responsibility is now rooted into Brazilian society” to such an extent that any future leader would find it difficult to make radical economic changes. “In order to stay in power he [Lula] needed to preserve this stability,” he says. That will still apply to Lula’s successor, irrespective of their leanings, he believes.
Whatever October’s election brings, few believe that Lula’s role in Brazilian political life will come to an end with his exit from the presidential palace.
Parana suggests Lula is likely to turn his attentions to international poverty and hunger reduction programmes. “Lula sees his ‘family’ as being the whole of humanity … This will be his project for the rest of his life,” she says.
Others speculate that Lula may return to dispute the presidency in 2014, the same year that Brazil will host the football World Cup.
“As soon as he leaves the presidency, he will become a potential candidate for the 2014 elections. He leaves power consecrated. Whoever wins, he will remain a reference,” says Barros e Silva. “Lula will continue to be a central political figure in Brazil.”
