MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazil's President-Elect Names Cabinet

President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva completed his cabinet Monday, naming 12 new ministers including a former presidential rival and a popular musician.

Ciro Gomes, a former candidate who threw his support to Silva after losing in the first round presidential elections, was named to head the Ministry of National Integration, while Jose Viegas Filho, Brazil's current ambassador to Russia, was named to head the Ministry of Defense.

Also among the 12 named Monday was Gilberto Gil, a dreadlocked pop star, who was tapped to head the Cultural Affairs Ministry.

Silva, a former union boss and Brazil's first elected leftist leader, has had to draw from a wide range of candidates for cabinet posts in order to please the diverse members of the coalition that helped elect him in a landslide last October.

Other appointments have included Henrique Meirelles, a former global banking head at FleetBoston Financial Corp. as Central Bank head, and environmentalist Sen. Marina Silva to be Environmental Affairs Minister.

Some politicians in Silva's leftist Workers Party have accused the president-elect of kowtowing to business interests in appointing international bankers and pillars of the business community to key posts.

Brazil's currency has lost 38 percent of its value against the dollar this year, in part because of investor concerns over whether Brazil and its new left-wing government will be committed to financing the country's large foreign debt burden or whether it will default.