Republican News · Thursday 10 October 2002

Lula, a Brazilian dream

Leftist leader on verge of taking presidency

BY SOLEDAD GALIANA

Lula da Silva is the incarnation of a dream that many Brazilians share. He overcame poverty to become the country's leading left-wing politician

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. Lula -as he is universally known - came within three per cent of winning Sunday's 6 October first round outright. Elections officials said Silva finished with 46.6 percent, compared to government-backed candidate Jose Serra's 23.7 percent. Eliminated in the first round voting were former Rio state governor Anthony Garotinho with 16.7 percent, followed by former finance minister Ciro Gomes with 12.4 percent, according to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

The election will now be a run-off between the two leading candidates, with da Silva a strong favourite to win.

Silva's campaign announced it would immediately begin hunting for votes from Garotinho, who had strong support from evangelical groups, and from Gomes, a centre-leftist seen as sympathetic to Silva.

Lula da Silva is the incarnation of a dream that many Brazilians share. He overcame poverty to become the country's leading left-wing politician.

Born in 1945 in the Northeastern city of Garanhuns, Pernambuco, Lula migrated with his family (father, mother and seven siblings) to Sao Paulo State in 1952. Lula started working very early and spent much of his childhood shining shoes and selling peanuts. He didn't learn to read until age 10. After taking a technical course, Lula became a mechanic.

In 1969, influenced by his brother, Jose Ferreira da Silva, he joined Brazil's 100,000-strong Metalworkers Union. After years of trade union activism, he was elected its leader in 1975. In that post, he helped transform the nation's mostly government-friendly unions into a powerful independent movement.

It was at the metalworkers union [Sindicarto dos metalurgicos do ABC] at Sao Bernardo do Campo 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. As a result, he was arrested and remained in the infamous Department of Political and Social Order - a military institution where torture and imprisonment of political dissidents was the rule - for 31 days.

In 1980, Lula brought together unionists, intellectuals, church activists and others to form the Workers' Party, the first major socialist party in Brazilian history. Upon the restoration of democracy in 1985, Lula was elected federal deputy in 1986 with the highest number of votes in the country.

On three previous occasions, Lula has presented his candidacy at presidential elections. On the first free elections held in 1989, Lula bid for the presidency. He came very close to winning, obtaining 31 million votes, but lost to Fernando Collor in the second round. In 1994 and 1998, he was defeated by Fernando Henrique Cardoso in the first rounds of the elections.

But it now looks like a case of fourth time lucky for Lula; the former shoe shine boy is about to take his place in the sun, bringing the biggest political change for a generation. His slogan: "Agora e Lula" [This time it's Lula]. The polls forecast that Lula will win the 27 October runoff by a wide margin.

Lula's supporters attended a hugely emotional closing rally at 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 Workers' Party (PT), the largest left wing party in Latin America, openly wept.

His popularity among workers is such that when Serra's team tried to film a piece in a factory in Sao Bernardo last September, workers downed tools, shouting 'Lula' until they forced the shoot to be abandoned.

"This is the beginning of a change in the history of the country, " Lula told the crowds. "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.

Under Lula, Brazil will now 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 Brazilian 'Real' dropped to its lowest ever level in the final week of the campaign, but despite the unease among finance traders as the currency plummeted, Lula's popularity with the 115 million eligible voters was unfazed.

However, in an attempt to keep the economy going and gain the confidence of investors and international financial organisations, Lula and the PT have been forced to compromise on a series of issues. Lula now sports a suit, has had his wild grey beard clipped and has even had his teeth straightened to woo voters. He now promises to make good the country's crippling $260bn debt - 60 per cent of its GDP - and work with the IMF to honour a $30bn loan, a double u-turn since his last candidature.

The PT has also built alliances with centre-right business leaders like Jose Alencar in order to appeal to a cross section of Brazilian society.

On the domestic front, 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 millionaires' row of Copacabana beach, for example.

Violence comes a close second - with drug gangs in so much control they can order the shut down of large areas of commercial Rio de Janeiro on command, as happened on the Monday of election week.

Corruption also ranks high on the agenda, involving police and politicians. But Lula also targets investors selling off Brazilian assets, who, he said, are committing "economic terrorism" on the country. He vowed that, if he could identify the culprits, he would "have them arrested".

Lula's victory in this first round of the presidential election owns much to the disillusionment of the electorate with free market policies, said political scientist David Fleischer, a US citizen teaching at the University of Brasilia.

Fleischer said that discontent is not confined to Brazil, but is part of a region-wide dissatisfaction with unbridled free markets, from crisis-ridden Argentina and Uruguay to Brazil's south to Peru and Ecuador to the west.

For many, Lula also represents a challenge to a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), a US-backed effort to link up the hemisphere in the world's largest trading bloc by 2005. Silva has called the FTAA Washington's "annexation plan of Latin America."

US banks - which have heavily invested in Brazil - will not be very impressed with a Lula victory. It seems US foreign policy-makers now have another powerful left-wing influence to worry about to the south to join Chavez in Venezuala.

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Massacre at Khan Yunis

Tuesday 8 October
BY SILVIO CERULLI

All of a sudden there is a roaring in the distance, the hiss of death before the explosion; then black smoke rising over the white mosques, the smell of burning flesh, women screaming. It was just last week, in the streets of Gaza City. The missiles were aimed at Mohamed Deif, according to the Israelis the leader of Izzedin Al Qassam, Hamas' military wing. Three people were killed and scores of passers-by were injured, while Deif survived the killing. "When the Apache helicopters hover in the Gaza skies, it means Sharon is thirsty for blood, our blood," Ahmed told me while visiting the ruins left by two years of vicious and intense bombardments.

A week later, the Apaches have returned in the starry sky, protecting the Golani infantry division entering the Al Amal refugee camp on the outskirts of Khan Yunis, escorted by over 40 tanks. They were met with fierce resistance and a three-hour gun battle ended in stalemate: the IDF failed to find or arrest any suspected militants. As usual, however, they succeeded in slaughtering yet more civilians.

As the tanks were withdrawing from the camp, the refugees came out of their homes. Women and children were in the streets and many locals had gathered around the Al Khatiba Mosque when the Apaches came back, firing one or two missiles into the crowd. Fourteen people were killed. The Israelis say the crowd was mistaken for armed terrorists. The American made and supplied Apache gunship is equipped with the latest hi-tech instruments; their crews knew all too well they were firing at a civilian population when the Apaches launched 400 missiles in a single attack into the Jenin's refugee camp last April. They knew all too well that there were women, men and children beside the Al Khatiba Mosque on Monday morning. They knew what were doing when, after the slaughter, they opened fire on the Khan Yunis hospital, where the dead and wounded had been taken. And of course, this is far from being a mistake or an isolated case: hospitals have been heavily bombarded in Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Gaza City since the start of the now two-year old Al-Aqsa Intifada. So, who are the real terrorists here?

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon branded the assault on Khan Yunis as a "success because the victims were all terrorists or half-terrorists. Now Hamas knows we can strike at them everywhere and we will use every means to do so". Sharon's strategy appears clear. In July, the massacre of 19 people (ten were children) using a one-ton F-16 bomb to kill Salah Shehade, Izzedin Al Qassam's leader before Deif; in September the killings in the Shujayeh district of Gaza City and now the "half terrorists", including one child in Khan Yunis.

Meanwhile, efforts towards achieving a draft of a ceasefire among the Palestinian armed organisations continue, despite the background of the Israeli Army's killings. Many believe that Ariel Sharon needs to provoke a new escalation. Hamas' reprisal for Monday morning's attack is essential to the Israeli policy of escalating the conflict in order to bury any chance of returning to the negotiating table.

The attack in Khan Yunis occurred while, 50 miles north of Gaza, the EU's Javier Solana was visiting the ruins of the Muqata, Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. The Palestinian leader had just ratified before the PNA Legislative Council, the declaration of Jerusalem as capital of the future state of Palestine, a response to the US decision to recognise the city as the Israeli capital. Arafat has emerged as the winner from the Ramallah siege but now the almost certain retaliation from Hamas will expose him to further humiliation from the Israelis and will bring even closer Sharon's goal of expelling him from the West Bank.

"Israel only wanted to test our resistance, it was a show of strength, warning us they can do whatever they wish. Yet they couldn't even occupy a small refugee camp and the attack was a total failure which they have tried to cover up with a bloodbath", affirms Mohamed al-Zahar, head of Hamas' political wing in Gaza, before warning of hard times ahead. "Israel knows that Izzedin Al Qassam will reply to the latest atrocity. We are only trying to defend ourselves, our actions are always a response and a form of resistance to the Zionist aggression. Sharon will shortly fly to Washington to win the US approval to the Gaza reoccupation. People here are waiting for him to come."