Yes, Lula is structuring policy to avoid capital flight/strike, which is not irrational given Brazil's position in the international trade sytem, but he's also using his position to demand a different place for Brazil in that system with his leadership of the "Group of 21" nations that challenged developed nations at the Cancun WTO summit.
-From Knight Ridder papers-
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Kevin G. Hall
Posted on Thu, Oct. 02, 2003
Brazil's Lula da Silva the new man of the hour
By Kevin G. Hall
Knight Ridder Newspapers
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazil's new president, an ex-shoeshine boy with a grade-school education, has quickly emerged as the world's leading voice for developing nations and a Nobel Peace Prize candidate.
After nine months in office, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - known affectionately as Lula - is the man to be seen with. From U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to French Premier Jacques Chirac to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, everyone wants to be photographed with the short, paunchy and bearded leader.
The Brazilian economy is in recession, but da Silva is still earning 70 percent approval ratings, thanks in large measure to how he's raised the country's international profile.
"The Man of the Hour," declared a headline in Sept. 24 editions of Istoe E, a leading Brazilian news magazine that reported on da Silva's love of the international limelight and his 13 trips abroad.
In Third World capitals from India to Burkina Faso, his call for rich countries to pay attention to poverty and hunger resonates. His message amounts to this: Global institutions such as the United Nations and the World Trade Organization favor rich nations and must be revamped to address the needs of developing nations, where most of the world's population lives.
"Brazil believes that the global economic order is out of balance. The order works against the development of our country," said Marco Aurelio Garcia, da Silva's special adviser for international affairs, in a recent interview. "This obligates us to take a more active foreign policy, one in which the national interest of the country and region are more strongly pursued."
For decades, Brazil has generally pursued an independent foreign policy not aligned with the United States or any other world power. But the difference now, says David Fleischer, a political scientist at the University of Brasilia, is that "Lula and his foreign policy people are more aggressive."
Da Silva, 57, is also being closely watched abroad because he is an elected leftist who champions the poor but attracts foreign investors normally wary of left-leaning governments.
Then there's his remarkable biography.
"He has been through the school of hard knocks," Fleischer said.
Forced to drop out of school to support his family, the leader of Latin America's largest country came to national power as Brazil's top labor leader. He founded the leftist Workers' Party, which helped end a long military dictatorship in 1985 and won power at the ballot box last October.
Da Silva seeks a new role for Brazil within South America, where it has long been seen as acting only in self-interest. Da Silva is showing the way on social reforms and is trying to sweet-talk nations into forming a regional trading bloc that would challenge barriers to their farm exports in the United States and Europe.
Intraregional trade in South America is paltry. But Brazil seeks to wrap up a trade deal by January 2004 with the Andean Pact, which includes Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia. It already had agreements with neighbors in South America's southern cone before da Silva took office.
As president, da Silva is showing leaders of the world's richest nations the same audacity he showed as a union leader and foe of military rulers. In London, with leaders of the eight most-developed nations, he blasted their anti-poverty efforts as paltry and suggested they create a fund for fighting world hunger. They did not, but it served notice to the world's poor that they had a new advocate.
In Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum brought together the captains of global commerce, da Silva warned them that thinking economic growth can be sustained without fixing the social ills in most developing nations would invite catastrophe. The International Monetary Fund has since agreed to weigh social progress with economic progress in future lending to Brazil.
Da Silva's relations with Washington remain cordial. After his visit with President Bush this year, the two countries agreed to create a bilateral working group to study barriers to trade and development.
But a Brazil-led revolt by 21 developing nations at the recent World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, ended trade talks with the highly industrialized world last month. Brazil and other members of the newly named Group of 21 vowed they would not sign any deal that doesn't guarantee greater access to the markets of the United States, Europe and Japan.
The Economist, England's business magazine, captured the essence of the rich-poor divide in the trade talks. Its magazine cover depicted a Mexican desert cactus in the shape of a hand with the middle finger pointing upward in the universal flip-off sign. The cover's caption read, "The charming outcome of the Cancun trade talks."
Da Silva's defense of the poor and hungry in global forums earned him a place among nominees for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, to be announced Oct. 10. The odds favor Pope John Paul II, but da Silva's in very good company.
That isn't to say he hasn't made mistakes. Da Silva lost significant prestige during his visit to his old friend, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, last month. For his refusal to meet with families of jailed dissidents, human rights groups blasted da Silva as a hypocrite.
The leading French daily, Le Monde, ran a photo of da Silva and Castro, who has ruled Cuba for 44 years, with this headline: "In Cuba, Lula Chose Not to Talk about Human Rights."
Da Silva may soon wade into similar controversy over Colombia, where the United States has provided more than $1 billion in military aid to fight drug-funded Marxist rebels. Da Silva has accepted U.N. Secretary-General Annan's request that he host talks between the United Nations and the guerrillas trying to overthrow Colombia's government. Annan hopes the dialogue could lead to peace between rebels and the Colombian government.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, elected to crush guerrilla groups who routinely kidnap, kill and maim nonpartisans, has shown little interest in peace talks, however.
Whether da Silva has the clout to bring him to the table remains to be seen.
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