AGORA E LULA!

Luiz Inacio ‘Lula’ da Silva, a poorly educated former lathe operator from the industrial heartland of Brazil, is on the brink of making history this weekend by becoming President of the eighth largest economy in the world.

As the final polls showed Lula - as he is universally known - within two per cent of winning Sunday’s [October 6] first round outright, his supporters attended a hugely emotional closing rally at the metalworkers union [Sindicarto dos metalurgicos do ABC] at Sao Bernardo do Campo in the industrial suburbs of Sao Paulo.

The crowd, many who were dressed in blue boiler-suits having come directly from work, chanted ‘Brazil Urgente, Lula Presidente!’, as the leader of the Worker’s Party (PT), the largest left party in Latin America, openly wept.

It was here that Lula made his name in the mid-1970s as the leader of a wave of strikes that helped end the military dictatorship that had held the country from 1964. After three failed attempts, it seems that the former shoe shine boy is about to take his place in the sun, the biggest political change for a generation. His slogan: “Agora e Lula” [This time it’s Lula].

“This is the beginning of a change in the history of the country, “ Lula told the crowds. “We are going to build this history in our own lives because it is very easy to recognise a hero after he dies, but we are all alive and starting from Sunday, if God wills it, we will have for the first time in the history of this country a metalworker as President of the country.

“Everything that we have done until now hasn’t been done to gain the Presidency, that is just a consequence. The most symbolic thing about me winning is that we will prove to anybody the truth of something that I said in 1979, which is that nobody will ever again be able to doubt the working classes.

“The most important thing that can happen is not simply the fact of me being elected President, it is the power to awaken the conscience in every man, woman and child that we cannot be treated differently because we are black, white, men, women or children or because we are educated or because we don’t have diplomas, because we are workers or we are unemployed.”

The symbolism of such a victory is not hard to comprehend for the tens of millions of Brazil’s poor.

But Brazil will set its face against the US for the first time over key policy issues - the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas due in 2005, the ‘war against drugs’ in Colombia and trade sanctions against Cuba.

The real currency, launched in 1994, dropped to its lowest ever level in the final week of the campaign to 5.9 to the pound – a disastrous drop of almost 40 per cent this year.

The drop was blamed on market jitters fearing such an outcome but despite this, as the currency plummeted, Lula’s popularity within the 115 million eligible voters increased.

As opinion polls closed, Lula had 43 per cent with his nearest rival, Jose Serra, the former health minister backed by current President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, stranded at 19 per cent. Lula’s supporters, having seen a 20-point lead disappear before, are rubbing their eyes in joy and disbelief.

The election is broadly played out on TV – the only medium to embrace the huge country, more than 20 times the size of Germany. Lula, attempting to become President for the fourth time, now sports a suit, has had his wild grey beard clipped and has even had his teeth straightened to woo the voters.

Brazil goes to the polls on October 6 not just to elect the President but also members of the Congress, the Senate and local governors. It is compulsory to vote – failure to do so can lead to arrest. The computerised election system is regarded as safe and fair.

At 8.30 for an hour each night across the networks, a bewildering array of punchy 30-second propaganda pitches fight for attention with much finger-jabbing, jingles and little substance. In the final televised debate on Thursday night on TV Globo, Lula emerged intact with the three other candidates, Serra, Ciro Gomes and Anthony Garotinho scrapping with each other for second place for a potential run-off.

When Serra’s team tried to film a piece in a factory in Sao Bernardo last month, workers down tools shouting ‘Lula’ until they forced the shoot to be abandoned. In urban Sao Paulo there is little evidence of Serra support – just the the paid flag waves on Avenida Paulista, the equivalent of Oxford Street.

To make themselves electable after more than a decade of defeats, the Worker’s Party, formed in 1980 and the largest left party in Latin America has made alliances with centre-right business leaders like Jose Alencar in order to appeal to a cross section of Brazilian society.

Many traditional activists within the PT are keeping their anger subdued at the prospect of victory but foresee fierce battles ahead.

Lula has softened not just his image. He now promises to make good the country’s crippling $260bn debt – 60 per cent of GDP – and work with the IMF honouring a $30bn loan, a double U-turn from his last candidature.

On the domestic agenda, rampant unemployment and poverty remain the principle issues. Despite its wealth, Brazil has the fourth largest gap between rich and poor in the world – starkly evident where the ramshackle slums, the favelas, rise above the millionaire’s row of Copacabaña beach, for example.

Violence comes a close second – with drug gangs in so much control they can order the shut down of large swathes of commercial Rio de Janeiro on command, as happened on the Monday of election week. The gangs are estimated to number 100,000 with an armoury of 65,000 guns – outstripping the state police force.

If Lula fails to win on October 6, there will be a run off with the second-placed candidate. If he fails to win now the left will plunge into a long, long night of despair.

But Lula is confident: “We have to believe that if we have big dreams then we will be able to make our dreams come true. I believe that all of us who are dreaming about a new world are dreaming without prejudice. We can both laugh and cry with happiness at the same time in the realisation that we can make all of the dreams of all of the Brazilian workers come true.”

If he succeeds, Brazilians will party long into next week. Hope is so high that no longer may they need World Cup victories and Carnival as regular distractions from the harsh struggle of every day life.
ENDS>

Gibby Zobel
Sao Paulo, Brazil
October 4, 2002.