Brazil's 39th President Remains in Office for Four More Years

by Fernanda Katz, SUNY Cortland, November 9, 2006

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Since the 1988 Brazilian Constitution, Brazil started having direct elections, meaning the people actually would vote directly for the candidate they may choose. And in the 1989 elections was the first Brazilians elected a president by direct popular vote in 29 years. The vote is mandatory and secret. It is a four-year mandate and the president can only be reelected once. Also, Brazil has a multi-party system, in which more than two persons run with chances for president. In order to win, the candidate has to earn the simple majority of the valid votes that is, 50% plus 1 of the valid votes. If the candidate does not get the majority of the votes in a first round, the two most voted candidates go to a second round in order to decide who wins.
Brazil just had, on the 29th of October, its second round for the presidential elections. The worker’s party candidate – Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva – was running for his presidential reelection, and he won in second round with 60.75% of the votes over another candidate called Geraldo Alckmin from the Brazilian Democrat Social Party.
Lula is the 39th Brazilian president. He was traditionally a very left-wing politician, but he became a modern social democrat since he took office in 2003, his first mandate. Lula was born in the northeast from Brazil, but soon moved and grew up in Sao Paulo, southeast part of Brazil. He did not have a formal education, and he had never earned a college and graduate degree. He started working at a young age and when he was 19 he lost a finger in an accident while working as a press operator in an automobile part factory, which became his trademark.
In 1978, he was elected president of the Steel Workers’ Union of two very important cities in the state of Sao Paulo for automobile manufacturing and industries as well. In 1980, along with academics, union leaders and intellectuals, Lula founded the Workers' Party, a left-wing party with progressive ideas.
The first time Lula ran for office was in 1982, and it was for the government of the satet of Sao Paulo, which he lost. In 1986, Lula won a seat in the Congress, in which he stayed until 1990. In 1989, it was the first time Lula ran as the Workers’ Party candidate for presidential offfice, and he lost. He ran again in 1994 and 1998, losing again. Finally, in 2002, he ran and won the elections in the second round.
His election got economists, businessmen and banks worried. They feared drastic measures would be taken by Lula concerning the Brazilian economy. But after winning the presidency, Lula changed many of his original ideals. Many people along with members of the Workers Party considered Lula a traitor. Instead of making 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. Lula followed a lot of the previous government ideals and projects, including renewing all agreements signed with the International Monetary Fund.
In 2005, a serie of corruptioon scandals almost threatened Lula's government. After the leader of the Workers’ Party, Roberto Jefferson, was implicated in a bribery case, he literally opened his mouth and accused the whole Worker's Party of paying members of congress illegal monthly stipends to vote for government-backed legislation, it was called the “big allowance”. Further more, campaign manager Duda Mendonca admitted he had used illegal money to finance Lula's electoral victory of 2002. In November 2005, Lula's former chief of staff was expelled from Congress due to his involvement with the scandal. In April 2006, Lula's finance minister Antonio Palocci resigned from his post due to his actions during the scandal's investigation. In the same month, congress released the conclusion of its investigation on the scandal, confirming the existence of the bribery scheme. President Lula was somehow speared from all the corruption scandal. The only evidence of his knowledge of the scheme is the testimony of Roberto Jefferson saying he had informed the presdient about it.
Anyway, all the corruption scandals seemed not to have interfered with the 2006 elections, and Lula was strong enough to run again and be re-elected. The question now is how is it going to be his next presidency: moderate and liberal as it has been or is it going to change?

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