Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – PT
Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva was born on October 27, 1945in Garanhuns, Pernambuco. Born to a poor family, Lula is the seventh of eight children. In December 1952, the family immigratedto Vicente de Carvalho, a poor neighborhood in the state of São Paulo. Lula received basic schooling, up to the fourth grade.
At fourteen, Lula got his first fixed jobin a warehouse, where he worked as a metalworker. In the strife that followed the 1964 military coup, Lula relocated to a steel industry company in São Bernando do Campo, in the ABC region – the industrial heartland ofSão PauloState,where he came into contact with the labor movement. In 1975, he became president of the 100 thousand-strong union with 92% of the votes.
In 1978, he was reelected union president and organized worker strikes—the first in ten years,given the government’s ban on union activities. In March 1979, 170,000 metalworkers paralyzed the ABC region by striking. Under his charismatic leadership, meetings were held in the local stadium in defiance of police intimidation. Repression against striking workers amidst an almost absolute absence of political representation of worker's rights in the National Congress led Lula to first consider setting up a workers' party.
By this time, Brazil was undergoing a gradual political transition of redemocratization, with power being transferred piecemeal from the armed forces to a civilian government. Taking advantage of this political opening, on February 10, 1980, Lula founded the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT) along with other union members, intellectuals, politicians, and representatives of civil society, such as rural and religious leaders. In the same year, another strike by metalworkers led to government intervention in the union and to the imprisonment of Lula and other union leaders. Such measures were backed by the National 2 Security Law. The leaders were held in prison for 31 days.
By 1982, the PT spread throughout the entire country. Lula guided the Party’s organization and ran in the São PauloState gubernatorial elections, comingin fourth. In 1984, he was one of the leaders of the “diretas-já” campaign in favor of free elections for President. In 1986, he won a seat in the parliamentary assembly, charged with writing a new constitution for the country. He was elected with the largest number of votes (650,134) ofassemblymen.
The PT floated Lula for the presidential elections of 1989, the first free election for that post in 29 years. He lost the election in the second round by a slim margin, but two years later championed the national campaign against corruption that led to the impeachment of President Fernando Collor de Mello. In two subsequent presidential elections (1994 and 1998), Lula was again a candidate, but lost both times to Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
Even before becoming President, Lula has been an active council member at the Citizenship Institute (Instituto Cidadania), a non-government organization that grew out of the “Shadow Government” set up by the PT to bring accountability to government's measures. This organization is geared towards research, debates, publishing, and above all, policy planning on issues of national interest. It is equally involved in campaigns to energize civil society in the struggle to ensure full citizenship for all Brazilians.
In June 2002, the PT’s National Convention agreed to a wide-ranging political alliance with other political parties (PL, PCdoB, PCB and PMN) under a platform of social inclusion for the great majority of the Brazilian people. The vice-presidential candidate on Lula’s ticket was Senator José
Alencar, of the Liberal Party (PL), from MinasGeraisState. On October 27, 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elected President of the Federative Republic of Brazil with almost 53 million votes (61,27%).
Upon assuming the presidency, Lula promised programs to take on hunger and economic inequality in Brazil, as well as the implementation of anti-corruption measures, the creation of new jobs and an improvement in education. His government’s original initiative, Zero Hunger (Fome Zero) was far from the success he had hoped, though the Family Assistance (Bolsa Família) program of cash transfers to poor families has been a major boon to his drive for support among poorer voters.
Lula has also toned down his formerly radical approach to economics, following an orthodox set of policies during his time in office that has been mostly a continuation of those implemented by his predecessor. The stabilization efforts have been well-received by investors that had originally anticipated a much less favorable situation, though they have also served to alienate some of Lula’s supporters, particularly in the landless’ workers movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST).
In 2005, corruption allegations surfaced detailing a vote-buying scandal in the Congress. Lula gave a formal apology and denied knowledge of any wrongdoing. The latter half of 2006 has presented several more challenges, the first coming in the form of street violence and police repression in the wake of prison uprisings in São Paulo state. More recently, new corruption charges have implicated the former chief of Lula’s re-election campaign in a scheme to buy false corruption allegations against Lula’s opponent in the 2002 elections, PSDB candidate José Serra.
Source: Brazilian Federal Government webpage, .
BBC Country Profile: Brazil,