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Let
Brazil elect Lula if it wants to
By
Jonathan
Power
August 9, 2002
LONDON - Twenty years ago when Luiz Inacio da Silva,
"Lula" as everyone calls him, first started to make a
splash in Brazilian politics both the West German
chancellor Helmut Schmidt and the Spanish prime minister
Adolfo Suarez took time out on one of their Latin
American trips to seek out the young trade union leader
and talk over his political philosophy and how he saw the
future of Brazil. They made it clear to journalists that
they were impressed. So was I. I spent four hours in face
to face conversation with Lula and we ranged far and
wide. Uneducated in a formal sense, his facility for
answering a difficult question well was awe-inspiring. "I
think it is better just go forward one millimetre", he
told me, "but one down to earth millimetre, knowing that
we won't have to go two millimetres backwards later
on".
That was two decades ago when he was 36. Since then
I've watched him brick by brick build up his Worker's
party to the powerhouse it is today. Now he is within
reach of winning the presidency, a development that has
sent the markets into a spin. It has not helped, as the
Economist put it recently, that "markets have a habit of
getting their way even when they are wrong. Predictions
of financial collapse are notoriously
self-fulfilling".
But that is why we have the International Monetary
Fund, or at least that is how it should be - to control
the tendencies to rout of the over simplistic market
place and to purvey information that takes the long view
rather than the misleading ones of the moment.
The truth is that Brazil is more than ripe for change.
It is a country seized with a social crisis of staggering
proportions, with tens of thousands of street children
whom an out of control police have often hunted down as
if they were rabid dogs, with the second unfairest
distribution of income in the world, with an upper
business clique that is manifestly corrupt, with a crime
rate that has climbed through the stratosphere, with a
land distribution system that gives the 20 largest
landowners more land than the 3.3 million smallest
farmers.
Yet Brazil in its way has everything. It is a mighty
nation of vast dimensions. It is bounded by the steamy
tropical rain forests to the north and cool, temperate,
munificent prairies to the south. No other country in the
world offers such an abundance of raw materials and raw
opportunities. Brazil, moreover, has always lived its
fantasy. Copacabaña beach, the carnival and the
samba are not just the tourist brochure's concoction.
They are as Brazil really is - the archetypal, relaxed,
tolerant and gregarious society. A country that has not
gone to war since 1870. A country that abolished
executions in 1855. A country that although its black
population was poor and undereducated never had Jim Crow
laws.
In the first 60 years of the last century it looked as
if Brazil was preparing for a fabulous lift-off. Taiwan
and Brazil shared the honours of being the fastest
growing economies in the world.
In the 1960s it started to come apart. The military
that had taken control began well but lost their way. Bad
economic management, the inequalities of the system and
the greed of the elite undermined the reach for growth.
Painfully, but carefully, democratically elected
President Fernando Henrique Cardosa, himself a one time
left winger, has put the pieces back together again. The
economy, until this manufactured crisis, was back on its
feet, disparities were diminishing, out of control police
were being disciplined and punished and land reform was
achieving some success. At this stage it would be natural
for any developed country - and Brazil is now as
developed as was Spain, Greece and Portugal when they
entered the European Community - to have a left of centre
government. Brazil, unlike many of its neighbours, has
neither radicals of the left nor the right. Its politics
in that sense is surprisingly mature.
Brazil is fortunate in having a candidate of the
political experience of Lula, who was saying so many
sensible things while today's currency traders were still
in short pants. This man, by no stretch of the
imagination is a Carlos Menem or Hugo Chavez. He is a
cool, level headed, exceptional clever and wise working
man who has not been afraid to surround himself with
sophisticated advisers, from the universities, the Church
and even industry.
Brazil, if it chooses, has every right to elect this
man. And the currency traders, bankers and their
"sympathisers" in the US Treasury and the IMF have no
right to demand a quid pro quo for giving well run Brazil
the financial support it now needs to resist the markets.
It is they who could run Brazil into the sand. I'm pretty
sure that Lula, left to his own devises, would only make
the country richer, stronger and fairer.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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