A US newspaper report over the weekend alleging that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had a drinking problem was branded "calumny and defamation" by a presidential spokeswoman.
A lengthy article, headlined "Brazilian leader's tippling becomes national concern," in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, brought swift denunciations from the president's staff.
PHOTO: AP
"We do not consider this article to be valid journalism," presidential spokeswoman Marcia Ornelas said Sunday.
"It is a piece of calumny and defamation and shows a prejudice against the president," the spokeswoman said.
Andre Singer, Silva's chief of communications, said on Sunday night that Brazil's ambassador to the US, Roberto Abdenur, has been instructed "to transmit to the publication in question the indignation and surprise of the Brazilian government at the gratuitous insults aimed at the president."
Singer added that "the president's social habits are moderate and in line with those of average Brazilians."
The Times article noted that Silva is frequently seen in photographs and TV news clips with a glass of whiskey or domestic rum in his hand. It also quoted a one-time political ally, former Rio de Janeiro Governor Leonel Brizola, as warning Silva that "distilled beverages are dangerous."
In a press statement, Silva's personal secretary Gilberto Carvalho said: "The Brazilian government should study harsh measures against a report such as this."
Ornelas said a defamation suit against the Times was "a possibility," but added that no decision regarding such an action had been taken as of Sunday. She said top presidential aides were due to meet yesterday to discuss fallout from the article and a possible legal response.
The writer of the article, Times correspondent Larry Rohter, was traveling outside Brazil and was unavailable for comment Sunday, his secretary said. Members of the newspaper's Corporate Communications Department were not immediately available for comment.
Ornelas said Silva was spending the weekend with his family in the presidential palace in Brasilia.
Allegations about potentially damaging personal habits and characteristics have been a part of Brazil's political scene for decades.
The diaries of Getulio Vargas, published in the 1990s, showed what medical experts called a tendency toward depression in the man who served longest as Brazilian president, a total of 18 years from the 1930s through the early 1950s. In 1954, Vargas committed suicide rather than face impeachment and trial for corruption in Brazil's Congress.
A president who was impeached, Fernando Collor de Mello, was dogged during his two-year presidency by allegations of cocaine use, which he always vehemently denied.
De Mello was impeached and removed from office in 1992 when corruption charges rocked his administration.
Historians have long pointed to alcohol abuse as part of a pattern of volatile behavior that undermined the brief presidency of Janio Quadros, who resigned as chief executive after only seven months in 1961, igniting a long political crisis that finally resulted in two decades of military rule starting in 1964.
Brazilians, on the other hand, have been traditionally more forgiving of their politicians than citizens of other countries.
Recent biographies of Juscelino Kubitschek, the president who built the shining new capital of Brasilia in the late 1950s, point out that frequent gossip about the president's womanizing during his term did little to tarnish his reputation with voters.
The knowledge that Silva had fathered an illegitimate daughter in the 1970s did not prevent voters from giving him a landslide victory in the 2002 presidential election.
Silva has acknowledged his paternity of Lurian Cordeiro.
A former lathe operator with a fifth-grade education, Silva has been given wide latitude by most voters in Brazil, a country in which two-thirds of the population characterizes itself as being part of the rural or urban working class.
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