LUIZ INáCIO LULA DA SILVA

'Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva' (pron. IPA: ), born 'Luiz Inácio da Silva' on October 27, 1945, popularly known as 'Lula', is the current President of Brazil, and a founding member of the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores). Lula was elected to the post in October 27, 2002 with 61% of the votes (run-off), and took office on January 1, 2003. He was elected on the same ticket as his vice-president, José Alencar. On October 29, 2006, Lula was re-elected with more than 60% of the votes, extending his position as President until January 1, 2011.

Early life

Lula was born to a very poor, illiterate white peasant family in Caetés (then still a district of the municipality of Garanhuns) in the state of Pernambuco. His date of birth was registered as October 6, 1945, although he prefers to use the date which his mother remembers him being born on, being October 27.
Soon after Lula's birth, his father moved to the coastal city of Guarujá (in the state of São Paulo). Lula's mother and her eight children joined his father in 1952, facing a journey of 13 days in a ''pau-de-arara'' (name for a truck's open cargo area). Although their living conditions were better than in Pernambuco, life was still very difficult.
Lula had little formal education. He did not learn to read until he was ten years old Lula: Fourth time lucky? , and quit school after the 4th grade. His working life began at age 12 as a shoeshine boy and street vendor. Lula da Silva Biography By age 14 he got his first formal job in a copper processing factory. Lula eventually studied for and received a high school equivalency diploma.
In 1956 his family relocated to the city of São Paulo, which offered greater opportunities. Lula, his mother and seven siblings lived in a small room in the back area of a bar.
At age 19, he lost a finger in an accident while working as a press operator in an automobile parts factory. After losing his finger he had to run to several hospitals to receive attention. This experience increased his interest in participating within Workers' Union. Around that time, he became involved in union activities and held several important union posts. Brazil's dictatorship strongly curbed trade unions' activities, and as a reaction Lula's views moved further to the political left.
In 1969 he married Maria de Lourdes, who died of hepatitis later that year. In 1974, Lula married Marisa, with whom he had three sons. He had a daughter out of wedlock this same year, with Miriam Cordeiro.

Union career

In 1978 he was elected president of the Steel Workers' Union of São Bernardo do Campo and Diadema, the cities home to most of Brazil's automobile manufacturing facilities (such as Ford, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and others) and among the most industrialized in the country.
In the late 1970s, Lula helped organize major union activities including huge strikes. He was jailed for a month, but was released following protests.

Political career

On 10 February 1980 a group of academics, union leaders and intellectuals, including Lula, founded the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) or Workers' Party, a left-wing party with progressive ideas created in the middle of the military dictatorship.
In 1982 he added the nickname ''Lula'' to his legal name. In 1983 he helped found the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) union association.
In 1984 PT and Lula joined the popular Diretas Já campaign, demanding a direct popular vote for the next Brazilian presidential election. According to the Brazilian 1967 Constitution, Presidents were then elected by both Congress houses in joint-session, plus representatives of all State Legislatures, but this was widely recognized as a mere sham as, since the military coup, only high-level military personnel (all retired generals) chosen after a closed military caucus had been so "elected". As a direct result of the campaign and after years of popular struggle, the 1989 elections were the first to elect a president by direct popular vote in 29 years.
In 1992 Lula joined the campaign for the impeachment of president Fernando Collor de Mello after a series of scandals involving public funds.

Elections

State visit to Mozambique, Nov. 2003. Lula aims to build Brazil's relationships with other Portuguese-speaking countries.

Lula first ran for office in 1982, for the government of the state of São Paulo. He lost, but helped his party to gain enough votes to remain in existence.
In the 1986 elections, Lula won a seat in Congress with a medium percentage of the votes. The Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) helped write the country's post-dictatorship constitution, ensuring strong constitutional guarantees for workers' rights, but failing to achieve redistribution of rural agricultural land. Though participating on its development, Lula and his party refused to sign the new constitution when it was finished.
In 1989, still as a Congressman, Lula ran as the PT presidential candidate. Although he was popular with a wide spectrum of Brazilian society, he was feared as an opponent by business owners and financial interests, and was submitted to a thorough vilification by the media, as well as to election-rigging on a local level (sudden absence of busing facilities in places — mostly poor neighbourhoods — where Lula was expected to win, etc.) something which contributed significantly to his loss in the election. The fact that his party was formed as a loose confederacy of trade unionists, grassroots activists, left Catholics, left-center social democrats and small Trotskyist groupings, although dampening overtly ideological issues, also earned him the distrust of better-off Brazilians precisely because of the ability of the PT to represent itself as the first working class mass movement organized on a grassroots basis. Conversely, Vargas' Brazilian Labor Party was mostly a top-heavy organization built around the top brass of the State-led trade-union bureaucracy.
Lula refused to run for re-election as a congressman in 1990, busying himself with expanding the Workers' Party organizations around the country. He continued to run for President in 1994 and 1998. As the political scene in the 1990s came to be under the sway of the real monetary stabilization plan, which ended decades of rampant inflation, Lula lost in 1994 (in the first round) to the official candidate, former Minister of Finance Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who ran for re-election (after a constitutional amendment ended the long-held rule that a president could not have a second term) in 1998, also having a first-round win.
In the following 2002 campaign, Lula forswore both his informal clothing style and his platform plank of conditioning the payment of Brazil's foreign debt to a prior thorough audit. This last point had worried economists, businessmen and banks, who feared that an even a partial Brazilian default along with the already ongoing Argentine default would have a massive ripple effect through the world economy.
Lula became President after winning the second round of the 2002 election, held on October 27, defeating the candidate José Serra of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (Brazilian Social Democracy Party, PSDB).

On October 1, 2006, Lula narrowly missed winning another term outright in the first round of elections. He faced a runoff on October 29 which he won by a substantial margin. Brazil re-elects President Lula

Lula's government

Political orientation

From the beginning of his political career to the current days, Lula has changed some of his original ideals and moderated his positions. Instead of deep social changes as proposed in the past, his government chose a reformist line, passing new retirement, tax, labor and judicial laws, and discussing a university reform. Some wings of the Worker's Party disagreed with these changes in focus and have left the party to form dissidences like the Workers' Cause Party, the United Socialist Workers' Party and the Socialism and Freedom Party.

Social projects

Lula da Silva put social programs at the top of his agenda during his campaign and since his election. Lula states that one of the main problems in Brazil today is hunger. According to FAO, Brazil has 15.6 million malnourished people. In order to tackle this issue, the Lula government devised Fome Zero (Zero Hunger). This program unifies a series of programs with the goal to end hunger in Brazil; including programs to create cisterns in Brazil's semi-arid region, to fight child-labor, to strengthen family agriculture, to distribute a minimum amount of money to the poor and many other things. The biggest program of Fome Zero is Bolsa Família, it gives financial aid to families with a very-low income (below R$60 per person, or R$120 for families with children up to 15). It requires that the families send their children to school and keep their mandatory personal vaccination-booklets duly updated. Fome Zero has a governmental budget and accepts donations from the public and international community.

Lula with Bono. The U2 singer donated a guitar to Fome Zero program.

Economy

As Lula gained strength in the run-up to the 2002 elections, the fear of drastic measures (and comparisons with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela) increased internal market speculation. This led to some market hysteria, contributing to a currency maxi-devaluation on the real, and a rise in Brazil's risk factor by more than 2000 base points. Brazil hit by debt downgrade
The minister of finance chosen by Lula in the beginning of his first term was Antônio Palocci, a physician and former trotskyst activist who had recanted his far left views while serving as the mayor of the sugarcane processing industry center of Ribeirão Preto.
Lula also chose Henrique Meirelles, from PSDB, a prominent market-oriented economist, as head of the Central Bank. As a former CEO of the BankBoston he was well known to the market. Henrique Meirelles Official Bio Meirelles was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 2002 as a member of the opossing PSDB, but resigned as deputy to become Governor of the Central Bank.

Lula with Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum

Lula and his cabinet followed in part with the ideals of the previous government ^[1], by renewing all agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which were signed by the time Argentina defaulted on its own deals in 2001. His government achieved a satisfactory primary budget surplus in the first 2 years, as required by the IMF agreement, exceeding the target for the third year. In late 2005, the government paid off its debt to the IMF in full, two years ahead of schedule. Brazil to pay off IMF debts early
Lula invested in international commerce to jump-start the Brazilian economy. He has signed political and economic treaties with many countries.
By following the macroeocnomic agenda of the previous government ^[2], three years after the election, Lula had slowly but firmly gained the market's confidence, and sovereign risk indexes fell to around 250 points. The government's choice of inflation targeting kept the economy stable, and was complimented during the World Economic Forum of Davos in 2005 .
The Brazilian economy was generally not affected by the Mensalão scandal. In early 2006, however, Palocci had to resign as finance minister due to his involvement in an abuse of power scandal. Lula then appointed Guido Mantega,a member of Lula's party (PT) and an economist by profession, as finance minister. Mantega, a former marxist who had written a Ph. D thesis (in Sociology) on the history of economic ideas in Brazil from a Left viewpoint, is presently known for his criticisms of high interest rates, which satisfy banking interests.
Not long after the start of his second term, Lula, alongside his cabinet, announced the "PAC" (short for Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento - ''Growth Acceleration Program''). A vast series of measures created with the intention of solving many of the problems that prevent the Brazilian economy to grow at higher rates. The measures include investment in the creation and recuperation of roads and railways, simplification and reduction of taxations, and modernization on the country's energy production to avoid further shortages among others. The money to be spent in this Program is considered to be around R$ 500 billion (more than 250 billion dollars) in four years. Part of the measures still depend on approval by the congress, some of them have already generated negative reactions from organizations that consider them unfair and governors of some states that claim the share allocated to their regions to be insufficient.

Foreign policy

Main articles: Foreign relations of Brazil

Lula with George W. Bush.

According to the periodical ''The Economist'' (2 March 2006), Lula has a pragmatic foreign policy, seeing himself as a negotiator, not an ideologue. As a result, he has befriended both Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and U.S. President George Bush. Leading a large and competitive agricultural nation, Lula generally opposes and criticizes farm subsidies, and this position has been seen as one of the reasons for the walkout of developing nations and subsequent collapse of the Cancun World Trade Organization talks in 2003 over G-8 agricultural subsidies. Brazil assumed an important role in international politics and is becoming a regional leader in a fertile dialogue between South America and developed countries, especially the U.S. It played an important role in negotiations in internal conflicts of Venezuela and Colombia, and concentrated efforts on strengthening MERCOSUL/MERCOSUR.
His administration has been credited with developing relations with India and South Africa.
During the Lula administration, Brazilian foreign trade has increased dramatically, changing from deficits to several surpluses since 2003. In 2004 the surplus reached US$ 29 billion due to a substantial increase in global demand for commodities (especially from China).
Lula's also supports the implementation of the Tobin tax on international financial transactions to aid developing nations. Brazil has also sent troops and leads a peace keeping mission in Haiti to show its resolve as a global player and to help its bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Brazilian Air Traffic Controllers Strike

Main articles: Brazil's 2006-2007 aviation crisis

On March 30, 2007, Brazil's air traffic controllers started a hunger strike that paralyzed Brazil's air traffic network. Brazil air chaos follows strike The goal of the workers' strike was to improve work conditions of air traffic controllers, who are subordinated to Brazilian Air Force (FAB in Portuguese). Immediately after the strike began, the FAB tried to arrest the involved people but the President accepted all of the terms in exchange for an immediate return to normal operation. After this event, the FAB rejected any further involvement with Brazil's air traffic controllers, leaving this issue to civil responsibility. However, this decision was only welcomed by the strikers', as one of their "key demands was for their sector to be switched to civilian management." Air chaos is new blow to Brazil's image Later in the week, the President altered his stance, stating that "only after order has been re-established can we go back to talking about changes in the sector. I understand the reasons for the strike, but we can't allow this in the aeronautic service." This strike is one element of an ongoing crisis in Brazilian's air traffic network, which started with the accident of Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907. As of April 2007, the crisis has not been formally concluded.

Awards and recognition

★ Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle (''Orden Mexicana del Águila Azteca''), Collar
Awarded by the Government of Mexico, August 7, 2007
President Calderón at Dinner Hosted in Honor of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his wife, Marisa Leticia Lula da Silva

★ Guest of honor at India's Republic Day Celebrations, January 26, 2004

Content Notes

References

1. [1]
2. ''IMF'' director interview, Anoop Singh

External links

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LUIZ INáCIO LULA DA SILVA

Early life

Union career

Political career

Elections

Lula's government

Political orientation

Social projects

Economy

Foreign policy

Brazilian Air Traffic Controllers Strike

Awards and recognition

Content Notes

References

External links

Economy

Lula's election and foreign policy

Interviews

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