Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva steps down tomorrow, handing power to an elected top aide after eight years steering his country into enviable stability and prosperity.
The legacy he leaves would be remarkable for any leader, but for the former factory metalworker and trade union leader he was, it resembles more a made-for-Hollywood story tracing a rise from poverty to power.
“The majority of the population have given me the opportunity to prove that a mechanic shift worker can do for this country what the elite never managed to do,” Lula said when he was first elected to Brazil’s highest office in October 2002.
The gruff, bearded head of state is leaving reluctantly. Brazil’s Constitution blocked him from seeking a third consecutive mandate despite a spectacular popularity rating of over 80 percent.
However, he did manage to secure his successes by making sure his former Cabinet chief, Dilma Rousseff, was elected to take over as Brazil’s first female president.
Unlike when Lula took power — to market panic at the idea of a leftist former union leader at the controls — economists are complacent at seeing Rousseff continuing what turned out to be fiscally responsible policies by the outgoing president.
Rather than implementing radical left-wing reform, as feared, Lula adopted dark suits and a calm, pragmatic approach that allowed him to become a star of global diplomacy while reinforcing cooperation between the world’s -developing nations.
The review Foreign Policy even went as far as to call him a “rock star” on the international stage who projected impressive charisma. US President Barack Obama called him “the man.”
A gifted negotiator, Lula knew how to build unlikely alliances or cast off friends who had suddenly become liabilities through political corruption scandals.
“I know how many slurs and prejudices I’ve had to overcome to get where I am. Now, my only goal is to show that I am more competent than many people who have run this country,” Lula said in 2006, as he was about to be re-elected.
The general feeling in Brazil is he achieved that aim, by maintaining an economic plan drafted by his predecessor, former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Social programs he championed have lifted 29 million people out of poverty and into a middle class that is developing a reputation for avid consumerism.
Lula’s common touch, with a vocabulary of the street, was a comfort to a population sick of bureaucrats.
His international prestige grew when he managed not one but two hosting coups, bringing the 2014 soccer World Cup and the 2016 Olympics to Brazil.
Born on Oct. 27, 1945, as the eighth and last child of a couple of poor farmers in the northeastern state of Pernambuco, Lula was seven when his family uprooted and moved to Sao Paulo state to escape poverty.
As a metalworker at age 14, he lost a finger on his left hand in a machine accident. At 21 he joined the union, and less than a decade later, in 1975, he became its president.
He was the force behind big strikes in the 1970s that challenged the military dictatorship in power at the time. In 1980, he created the Workers Party that rules Brazil today.
Lula presented himself in presidential elections for the first time in 1989, but lost narrowly to former Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Mello, who resigned amid impeachment proceedings for corruption in 1992.
Lula failed twice more, in 1994 and 1998, losing to Cardoso.
The fourth time, in October 2002, he succeeded, and in 2006 easily won re-election.
Lula has not said what he plans to do after stepping down, though speculation swirls he might accept a high-profile international post — or try a comeback as president in 2014 elections.
Lula himself gave credence to that latter option when he said last week he would “never say never” to running for office again.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the