MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazilian vice-president promises loyalty to Lula

Brazilian vice-president Jose Alencar said he was ready to take office if president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was impeached on corruption charges and censored. In that case the first thing I would do “is change the current monetary policy”, said Mr. Alencar in an interview published Sunday in the influential Folha de Sao Paulo.

However Mr. Alencar made it a point to emphasize that he is totally dedicated to President Lula da Silva and "won't move a finger" to harm his position.

When asked specifically if he was ready to take office is President Lula was forced out, Mr. Alencar said, "of course, totally ready", and "to change monetary policy".

According to Mr. Alencar "the current economic policy is a continuation of what we inherited but we campaigned against it".

The vicepresident has been particularly critical of the ultra orthodox Central Bank policy which every month defines the basic interest rate that now stands at 19,75%.

So far the Lula administration has not interfered with the independent action of the Brazilian Central Bank, in spite of strong lobbying from industry and consumer credit institutions.

Mr. Alencar also defended President Lula da Silva's from the corruption crisis involving the ruling Workers Party that is under investigation for the fraudulent double accountancy with which bribes were paid out to political allies and others.

"I think that Lula is a victim of his party's disaster" said Alencar to Folha de Sao Paulo adding that "everyone is well aware of the president's domestic and overseas agenda which leaves him on free time to manage the finances of the party".

However another Sao Paulo newspaper revealed in its Sunday edition that the ruling Workers Party also paid travel expenses for the president's family with funds allocated by the government and earmarked for campaign expenses.

According to O Estado de Sao Paulo, Lula's children and several other relatives, as well as the wife and a daughter of Finance Minister Antonio Palocci, made several trips between Sao Paulo and Brasilia which were paid for by the Workers Party using government-supplied "party funds".

Apparently the trips took place in December 2002 and January 2003, during the transition period from the outgoing Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration and the incoming Lula administration which officially took office January first, 2003.

Vice-president Alencar admitted that he wants to be president, a dream that "every politician has" but he added that he would not lift a finger against Lula to make that dream a reality, regardless of the fact that he is first in the line of succession.

"I would like (to be president) but as the result of an election, and I would not do anything to harm President Lula," to whom he said he owed his loyalty and whom he intended to help "recover his prestige and finish out his administration".

The vice president revealed that there were those who had suggested that he support an impeachment trial against Lula, but he insisted that "honestly, I would never do that".

But the political crisis has also reached vice-president Alencar. Actually one of the several parties involved in the bribes scandals is the Liberal Party, from which Alencar resigned last week saying that he felt "upset by this whole thing, this brutal political crisis, which affects all those who are in public life".