This article from January 2003, published during the first days of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s first term as president, analyses his most immediate challenges. The president, widely known as Lula, went on to introduce social programmes and oversaw a period of economic growth, which helped him to win re-election in 2007. By the time he left office in 2010 he had an 80 per cent approval rating and he remains one of the country’s most popular politicians. He was succeeded by his party colleague Dilma Rousseff, who governed the country until her impeachment in 2016. Lula was convicted of corruption and money laundering in 2017 and imprisoned until 2019, but in 2021 Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that Lula’s charges must be nullified, paving the way for him to run for the presidency once more. Lula, who is 77 today, is facing off against Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing nationalist incumbent, and is at present slightly ahead in the polls. The final round of elections takes place on Sunday, 31 October.
Has there ever been a government quite like the one that has now taken power in Brazil? The new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, will take the whole of his cabinet on a weekend visit to the poverty-stricken north-east on 11 January. “I want the ministers to look into the eyes of the Brazilians living there,” said “Lula”, who was himself born into a very poor north-eastern family and has never been ashamed of shedding a tear or two publicly when confronted with human misery. No one knows better than Lula the scale of poverty and exploitation in Brazil, for he has spent much of the past eight years travelling in his “caravans” into the most remote areas of this giant country. He says that it was the miseria – the Brazilian word for degrading poverty – that he saw on these trips that gave him the determination to carry on running for the presidency after three defeats. “I shall feel that my life’s mission has been achieved if at the end of my government every Brazilian is able to eat three square meals a day,” said Lula after his electoral victory on 27 October.
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