Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday accepted his nomination by the leftist Worker’s Party (PT) to run for a second term in October elections.
”I’m here today to tell you that the dream has not ended and that hope has not died,” Lula (60) said at a national PT convention in Brasilia.
”I am again the candidate not by ambition, but rather because the project to transform Brazil must continue,” he said.
”I’m here to tell you once more that I’ve accepted, from the bottom of my heart, the call … to continue the struggle for a more just and independent Brazil, where each Brazilian can eat three times a day, can have a job, education and good health,” Lula told an enthusiastic crowd of about 2 000 party delegates.
Lula also said that he would keep Vice-President Jose Alencar, a conservative businessman, on the party ticket.
A May poll by CNT/Sensus showed Lula obtaining more than 50% of the vote, enough to avoid a run-off election.
The poll put Lula 20 points ahead of his nearest rival, Geraldo Alckmin from the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). Fernando Henrique Cardoso, president from 1995 to 2002, is a PSDB member.
Lula’s popularity has been on the upswing in recent weeks after plummeting in 2005 amid a wave of corruption scandals that led to the resignation of Jose Dirceu, a top government official and a main figure in Lula’s party.
Analysts say Lula’s recovery is due to his busy public agenda, which has included inaugurating public works, especially in working-class neighbourhoods, and his complaints that the country’s ”elites” are manoeuvring to recover political power.
”The opposition had failed to destroy the Lula myth,” said one top government adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Lula is the candidate of the poor, which in Brazil ”represents 80% of the population” and who benefit from the government’s social programmes, the adviser said.
But Lula is also the candidate of the rich, because Big Money ”does whatever they want, without strong opposition” to the macroeconomic policies they favour, the adviser said.
A former union leader and one-time shoeshine boy, Lula toned down his fiery leftist rhetoric to win the presidency in 2002 after failed bids in 1989, 1994 and 1998.
Lula was born in October 1945, of impoverished parents in north-eastern Brazil.
He got his first job as a metal worker at the age of 14. A trade unionist and strike leader, he came to symbolise opposition to the country’s military dictatorship in the 1970s and early 1980s. He founded the PT in February 1980.
In 1986, Lula was elected as a federal deputy, and three years later launched his first presidential bid.
Lula’s trump card against political attacks is to blame Brazil’s elites for refusing to acknowledge his victory.
”Every day there are people spewing hatred against me. This happens because they governed the country since the arrival of [Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares] Cabral [in 1500] and they have done nothing.
”They ask: ‘Why is this metal worker doing something?’ Because this metal worker has something they do not have: character,” he said recently. — Sapa-AFP