(texto em português no post seguinte)
Por Jay Naidoo (23-11-2012)
“The biggest legacy of my presidency is not the programmes that took 30 million Brazilians out of absolute poverty and created 15 million jobs. It is the accountability of the public institutions and real partnership with business, labour and civil society that brought hope to the people. We put the needs of the people first. Not ours.” This was the fundamental point that ex-president Lula made when we met this week. It was a meeting that would be difficult to forget.
“I was not the president. The people were the president. The foundation of the ‘Brazilian Miracle’ is not mine. It is that of the people. If I failed my people who elected me, it would be the people failing, and the poor would be proving their critics right that we did not have what it takes to rule,” he says emphatically.
The challenges of the first term were tremendous. Faced with hyper-inflation, an unfriendly bureaucracy and suspicious military, the Lula Administration faced difficult choices. The Workers’ Party, led by Lula, only represented 17 % of the members of a fragmented and chaotic Congress, dominated by powerful vested interests that would more often than not oppose his policies.
He recognised the need to stabilise the macro-economic environment through a set of pragmatic policies that established stability. But he did that through a transparent dialogue even with his fiercest critics.
Lula is the antithesis of the ‘big man’ syndrome of political arrogance that dominates so many governments. He criss-crossed the country; engaged the landless movements, trade unions, civil society and social movements.
