Feature Page: Brazil’s workers sour on Lula
2004Gerry Foley 2004-07The page as the paper published it (Wayback Machine) →
From the paper's own web edition, recovered from the Internet Archive: the text as the paper put it online, not machine-read. The printed issue of July 2004 is not held.
by Gerry Foley
Of the several populist politicians swept into office in Latin America in recent years by the growing popular revolt against so-called neoliberalism, Luis Ignacio da Silva (‘Lula") probably carried the greatest hopes with him when he took office on Jan. 1, 2003. He had gained a reputation as a fighter for the working class and poor by a long career as a militant trade-union leader who got his baptisms of fire under a ruthless military dictatorship.
Lula finally won election after being kept out of the presidency three times by furious campaigns by the bourgeois parties and their big business backers, who demonized him as a threat to the established order.
Once in office, however, Lula has followed the same course as the region’s other populists, like Toledo in Peru or Gutierrez in Ecuador. That is, the same neoliberal course as his openly conservative predecessor but behind a more sympathetic face, one that sheds tears for the poor.
Lula’s popularity rating has not fallen so rapidly or so far as that of Toledo and Gutierrez, whose popular support has shrunk to a small minority. But it has now begun to fall quite perceptibly.
In June, according to CNT/Sensus, the approval rating of Lula’s government fell below 30 percent. The percentage of disapproval rose from 20 to 24 percent.
Lula’s personal approval rate fell from slightly over 60 percent, about the same as his vote when he was elected, to about 54 percent. His disapproval rate rose from 32.4 percent to 37.6 percent. Some 58.9 percent thought that the Lula government could have done more than it has; 47.6 percent said that they would not vote for him today.
At the funeral on June 22 of Lionel Brizola, leader of the Democratic Workers Party, and a previous running mate of Lula, the Brazilian president drew shouts of "traitor" from the crowd, and had to make a hasty retreat (reported by the Mexico daily La Jornada of June 23). Brizola had broken with Lula at the beginning of the year in condemnation of his record in office.
This article first appeared in the July 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.