Diplomatic Dispatches
www.sofiaecho.com Jose Augusto Lindgren Alves
OF all the European media that covered the first events of 2003, French newspapers, not to mention the Portuguese, seem to have best grasped the meaning of a seemingly routine fact on the other side of the world: the inauguration of Luis Inacio Lula da Silva as President of Brazil.
I do not refer only to the leftist Liberation with its tender-sounding frontpage headline: "Au boulot, Lula!" Nor do I particularise the stimulating "Viva Brasil!" by I. Ramonet in Le Monde Diplomatique. I do bear in mind the coverage of the Brazilian situation by different journalists in the French media - to which I gladly add the moving hour-long programme on the Italian TG2, that I saw here in Bulgaria.
Important for their content, those articles detract from the daily published flood of "non-news" the world over, about the sale of football players among competing teams, marriages of pretty, powerless princesses, or unnecessary shows of military might for a war nobody seems to want. While enticing the consumers, insistence on such non-events (to speak of Jean Baudrillard) distracts public attention from the much closer, widespread problems of poverty, disease and hunger that can breed the crime, racism, genocide and terrorism we all abhor.
Lula was chosen by more than 60 per cent of an "electoral college" of 115 million - all the citizens of voting age (voluntary at 16, compulsory at 18) - in a computerised balloting system (voters simply pressed buttons with the colour of their candidates) that brought out the results in a few hours. Its fairness and technical perfection were praised by all. They proved that a peripheral state, of mid-level development, does not need to belong to a privileged group of rich and powerful to display exemplary behaviour.
In his capacity as Head of State of the largest Latin democracy, the new President of Brazil is a case in point, for many reasons.
Born in a poor family of eight children, in one of the poorest regions of the northeastern backlands, Lula and his family migrated to Sao Paulo, where they first lived together in only one room, at the back of a bar. At an age when other kids play with toys, he was a street peddler of peanuts and a shoe-shiner. Having made elementary studies at school, at 12 he got work in a laundry. After performing several odd jobs, he obtained a place on a course to become a metal worker. It was during his employment as a lathe operator that he projected himself as a union leader, who co-ordinated strikes in the seventies, and became an outstanding opponent of the military regime. In that period Lula was arrested and first labeled a "leftist" (a label that then applied to most of his present opponents), more inspired by Lech Walesa than "Che" Guevara. His charisma and intelligence led him to found, with different social forces, the Workers' Party, soon to become, under his guidance, one of the most formidable political forces in the country.
Since 1989, when he ran as a candidate in the first direct presidential suffrage after the military take-over of 1964, the label of "leftist" has been branded on Lula with the aim of turning ordinary people against him. It is true that the Workers' Party has always been on the Left, gathering Trotskyites to mild social democrats. Nevertheless, however radical his discourse might have been in the past, Lula is a man who evolves, for he learns from the lessons of time and his own political defeats. He knows that the period of Revolutions has passed, that capitalist globalisation is now an unavoidable trend. But he also knows that globalisation cannot go on as it is, disrupting lives and countries in the name of competitiveness, disguised under the fallacy of short term economic efficiency.
As far as I could follow from translations, few newspapers in Bulgaria tried to analyse Lula's victory. One of the exceptions - and a very positive one - was the article by K. Kadrinova, in Sega, on January 13. Her analysis is good, except for the confrontational tone she lends to the new President. He does not intend to be a nail inside anybody's shoe.
An authentic leader with very humble origins, Lula represents for Brazil an encouraging sign of social mobility. He is the first non-elite personality ever to attain the highest political position in a country that is rich, but full of social contrasts. Having suffered in his own skin - and his own stomach - the distresses of poverty, malnutrition and hunger, the first programme he has launched, dubbed "Zero Hunger", sets the aim of ensuring that all inhabitants of Brazil may sometime enjoy the luxury of three meals a day. If he succeeds in this simple goal, difficult to achieve in the circumstances we all live, rather than a nail in somebody's foot, the Brazilian experience might become a lighthouse to help steer our times out of today's global gloom.