MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lula begins long, hard road to reforming Brazilian society

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's leftist president-elect, is seeking a broad consensus in order to try to deal with problems as big as his sprawling country.

However, Lula must seek support for his policies from a diverse legislature comprised of some 20 disparate parties, as well as his own party's powerful left wing, which is just beginning it show its teeth. Lula's Workers Party (PT) controls only 18 percent of the seats in the lower house and an even smaller minority in the Senate. The PT also seemingly lacks influential allies that might support the socialist platform that brought the president-elect to power. The party whose ideology appears to dovetail most closely with that of the PT is the Social Democracy Party (PSDB) of outgoing President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Jose Serra, Lula's opponent in last Sunday's runoff election. But after eight years in power, PSDB spokespersons say it is time to reinvent themselves as an opposition party. Both parties also appear to be competing for the same political space that has determined Brazil's past three presidential elections - that of the center-left. Cardoso has expressed delight at the electoral triumphs of both Lula and Sen. Eduardo Suplicy, also of the PT. He said this was due to the fact that Lula would be able to combat widespread poverty in a way that he could not, because of his administration's close ties to conservative interests. Lula now faces the challenge of achieving more accelerated economic growth, creating jobs for at least 10 million people, distributing the wealth more equitably, enacting peaceful agrarian reform and policies to eradicate hunger and poverty, which affects one-third of all Brazilians. In his first speech as president-elect on Monday, Lula outlined his administration's plans for reforming Brazil's labor laws and tax code, tackling land reform and instituting political and social security reforms, saying he hoped to achieve these aims through compromise and negotiation. Prior to his inauguration, Lula said he wanted to push forward his plans for tax reform and rework the 2003 budget. He said he would also give immediate attention to the 40 million Brazilians he claims are suffering from hunger. Lula, who was born 57 years ago in Brazil's most impoverished region, said he had experienced his country's social injustice firsthand. "I'll never betray my ideals," Lula said. However, like Cardoso, Lula could find himself constrained by promises made to conservative groups who helped him come to power, as well assurances that his policies would not disrupt the country's banking sector or financial markets. His allies from past labor struggles have urged him not to stray from the ideals that won him the support of tens of millions of Brazilians eager for change and made him the champion of the "silent revolution" begun by the PT 22 years ago. The radical wing of the PT maintained a strategic silence during the election campaign, but has already begun to rear its head and demand that the party follow through on its social agenda and overhaul the current economic model. This radical wing could serve as an internal watchdog, ensuring that Lula does not compromise his professed ideology in the interests of political expediency and market stability. This faction was controlled during the campaign by the iron hand of PT chairman Jose Dirceu, a former guerrilla who was imprisoned under the former military dictatorship (1964-1985) and exchanged for a kidnapped U.S. ambassador. It remains to be seen whether Dirceu, Lula's right-hand man, can maintain this control during Lula's presidency.