Posted on 29-10-2002

Worker's Lula Wins Brazilian Presidential Race
By Larry Rohter, NYT 28 Oct02

RIO DE JANEIRO, Monday, Oct. 28 — Brazil took a decisive turn to the left
on Sunday, electing as its new president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the
Workers' Party, a former factory worker, labor union leader and political
prisoner who has never before held executive office. The margin of victory
for Mr. da Silva was the largest in Brazilian history. With 99 percent of
the ballots tallied in Sunday's runoff, Mr. da Silva was leading handily
with 61.2 percent of the vote, compared with 38.8 percent for his rival,
José Serra of the centrist Brazilian Social Democratic Party, which has
governed this nation of 175 million people for the past eight years. His
dominance, with nearly 52 million votes, gives him an indisputable mandate
to remake Latin America's most populous country. "This is a true landslide,
an historic shift of direction, which shows how much this country wants
change," said Candido Mendes, a leading political scientist here and the
author of "Lula: An Option More Than a Vote." "Lula has won in every region
of the country and at every strata of society."

Mr. da Silva's resounding victory is also likely to reverberate abroad,
energizing the left throughout Latin America and further unnerving
international financial markets. The Workers' Party has been a consistent
critic of the United States and the values it espouses, and has promised to
reduce what it calls Brazil's economic and political "subservience" to
foreign interests.

Even before the voting began, President Fidel Castro of Cuba hailed Mr. da
Silva's victory, telling reporters in Havana, "We are friends and I admire
his perseverance." President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela spoke of Mr. da Silva
joining him in a Latin American "axis of good." The White House was less
enthusiastic, with the president's spokesman, Ari Fleischer, saying Sunday
night that President Bush "looks forward to working productively with
Brazil."

"Hope has vanquished fear," Mr. da Silva said Sunday night in São Paulo
after Mr. Serra called him to concede. He said that as president he would
"do everything within my reach to bring peace to our continent" and "build
a country that has more justice, brotherhood and solidarity." Brazil's
willingness to elect a working-class president for the first time in its
history had been clear since the initial round of balloting on Oct. 6, when
Mr. da Silva fell just short of the majority he needed to avoid a runoff
with Mr. Serra." But the "red wave" that some political commentators had
predicted would sweep Brazil today did not materialize, as Mr. da Silva's
coattails proved shorter than he had hoped. Though the Workers' Party
picked up numerous new congressional seats in the first round, its
candidates in runoffs for state governorships did not fare as well on
Sunday. As a result, the five largest of Brazil's 27 states will be
governed by other parties. Nevertheless, Mr. da Silva's overwhelming
victory makes him Brazil's first left-wing president in more than 40 years
and the first ever to win the post at the polls.

In three previous attempts at the presidency, Mr. da Silva had never won
more than a quarter of the total votes cast in the first round. In those
earlier races, his party's program was deemed too radical and the angry,
vindictive tone of his speeches alarmed voters. But after losing
emphatically in 1998, he began to moderate the Workers' Party platform and
his own image, a process that gave birth to what the Brazilian press has
come to call "Lula Light." (In an odd twist, "lite" has been adopted as
"light" in Portuguese.) Since then, the Workers' Party has abandoned its
demands that Brazil break with the free-market economic model and default
on its foreign debt. Mr. da Silva himself trimmed his unruly beard, tried
to be less irascible and began dressing in suits and ties, though keeping
his ever-present lapel pin with his party's emblem, the red star.

With growth throttled, the country's currency losing more than a quarter of
its value against the dollar this year and unemployment soaring, Mr. da
Silva's attacks on the policies of the current government have proved more
popular than in the past. He also promised to create 10 million new jobs
during his four-year term and to bring down interest rates, which at 21
percent are among the highest in the world.

"It's time to give Lula a chance, because the current approach clearly
isn't working," Carolina Figueiredo, a schoolteacher here, said this
morning after voting. "He's been working hard and honestly for this for 22
years, and both he and the Workers Party have matured enough that I am
willing to put the destiny of the country in their hands."

But when Mr. da Silva takes office on Jan. 1, Brazil is likely to undergo a
change not just of policies but also of style. In sharp contrast to
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, an urbane former sociology professor
who speaks five languages fluently, Mr. da Silva left school after
finishing the fifth grade, is occasionally flummoxed by the Portuguese
language and prides himself on being a man of the people.

Da Silva is the most common surname in this country, and when the
president-elect first ran for office two decades ago, one of his campaign
slogans was "a Brazilian just like you." During this year's campaign he
took a similar tack, accusing the nation's elite of being selfish and
incompetent and arguing that it was time for ordinary Brazilians to have
their voices heard. "I want my victory to symbolize that nobody is inferior
to anybody else," Mr. da Silva said in a speech on Wednesday. "A lathe
operator can be more competent in doing politics than many political
scientists."

Mr. da Silva, who turned 57 today, was born in the arid northeastern state
of Pernambuco, one of Brazil's poorest. Both his parents were farm
laborers, but at the age of 7, Mr. da Silva moved southward to the
industrial state of São Paulo, where his father, who had migrated earlier
in hopes of improving the family's fortunes, was working as a stevedore.

In São Paulo, however, the family remained mired in poverty: as Mr. da
Silva reminded Brazilian voters in a campaign-closing television debate on
Friday night, for a while he lived in a shack, "and there is nothing
agreeable about that." At age 12, he went to work full time, initially as
an office boy and eventually as a worker in a metallurgical plant, where he
lost part of the little finger on his left hand in an industrial accident.
By 1975, Mr. da Silva was president of the metalworkers' union in São
Bernardo do Campo. In the late 1970's, he led a series of strikes that made
him a national figure and brought about his arrest and imprisonment by the
right-wing military dictatorship then in power.

Freed in 1980 after a worldwide campaign in which he was called "the Lech
Walesa of Brazil," Mr. da Silva, along with a group of intellectuals, labor
leaders, Liberation Theology advocates and environmentalists soon
thereafter founded the Workers' Party. While leftists in neighboring
countries like Colombia and Peru migrated to guerrilla movements, the
Workers' Party remained patient, learning from its mistakes and performing
better in each successive election. "This is a great victory for democracy
and for our people," José Dirceu, a guerrilla-turned-congressman who is Mr.
da Silva's closest political associate, said on Sunday night. "But it is
also a great victory for the Workers' Party."