Lula: Brazil’s saviour

Lula increases his lead at the top of the opinion polls. The financial community, controlled by Brazil’s elite, begin to show signs of panic but Lula’s discourse is that of a pragmatist, not an extremist.

Finally, for the first time in its history, Brazil seems set to elect a president who will ensure that the country enjoys a fair term of government which approaches the needs of Brazil’s population, and not the ruling clique of 5% who own 95% of the country, with firmness, integrity and from a viewpoint of real social justice, not simply palliative sweeteners handed out demagogically, shortly before elections.

As Lula (Luis Inacio Lula da Silva), of the Labour Party (PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores) sees his lead at the top of the opinion polls rise from 32% to 38%, he declares that his party continues to represent the left, to defend an agrarian reform policy and a revision of Brazil’s foreign debt, favouring also a revision of the social contract, regulating the relationship between the country’s social classes. However, far from the extremist policies derided by a collective and increasing hysteria from the corrupt ruling clique, Lula expounds a sensible, plausible and pragmatic policy for a modern Brazil living in a climate of social justice.

“I am 56 years old and I have been in politics for the last 30 years, when I stood up on a soap box in factory doorways. The world has changed a lot in these three decades and so have I. I have kept my ideals but I have changed in many ways and today I speak to a larger audience. Before, I was speaking to metalworkers and landless rural workers, today my audience includes the landowners”, he declared in Rio de Janeiro on Monday.

He added that “Today I speak to all of Brazilian society, from the leaders of industry to the shoe-shine boy on the street corner”. He declared that the PT is the largest leftist party in Latin America and that he feels ready to govern Brazil: the PT governs the city of Sao Paulo and the State of Rio de Janeiro, apart from other important cities and regions in Brazil.

As usual, the ruling elite stampedes towards an all-powerful mass coalition not to govern the country, but to stop Lula doing so. Official candidate Jose Serra, appointed by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, from the same party (PSDB, Social Democrats in name yet anything but Social, or Democrats, in practice) is slipping in the polls, now lying second with 16%, tied with Anthony Garotinho (PSB, Socialist, centre-right) and Ciro Gomes (PPS) is fourth (10%). The three right-wing parties, PSDB, PMDB and PFL are considering dropping Serra to choose another candidate supported by all three parties. Main candidates for the short-list are Aecio Neves and Tasso Jereissati (both PSDB)

The coalition against Lula is a reflex panic attack against anything which threatens to change the status quo in Brazil. Lula accuses the banks of “economic terrorism”: “I think some banks are committing economic terrorism by lowering the exchange rate simply because a candidate from the PT is ahead. This is ridiculous”.

Ridiculous it is, especially when Lula’s policy is examined under the microscope: “I am going to make an agrarian reform programme without violence and without invading people’s properties”. He intends to increase the minimum salary, currently 90 Euros (82 USD per month). He intends to address the problem of unemployment, He intends to tackle the deep-rooted problem of social injustice, where some Brazilians, but only a few, are more equal than most. He intends to resolve Brazil’s massive foreign debt. Decades of right-wing rule have left the people of Brazil with a huge burden of 230 billion USD in foreign debt around their collective neck. Lula wants to renegotiate the part borne by the government (90 bn. USD).

“I do not wish to fight with the international community, I shall wait for the right time to make a renovation or an adjustment and then, without breaking existing rules, I shall try to obtain better time scales, better interest rates, just like any other leader of a first world nation who is dealing with bankers while representing his country”.

Lula wants foreign investment based not on high interest rates, “but on a market of 170,000,000 people with good infrastructures and a skilled workforce”. Lula will deliver, if the international community does not interfere and if the people of Brazil have the political courage to take the destiny of their great country into their own hands, led by a responsible and experienced government which is determined to give them an improved standard of living in a modern state.

Marcia MIRANDA PRAVDA.Ru BRAZIL