Since Brazil's new president, Luiz In‡cio da Silva, universally known as Lula, took office on Jan. 1st, the left in Latin America has been poring over his inaugural address and has found in it most encouraging signs that their day has come. Apparently, they and other misguided observers do not realize that there in Brazil, here in the U.S, and everywhere, an inaugural address is nothing else than the last speech of a campaign, a speech in which the victorious candidate, before sitting down to the tough task of governing, reiterates for the last time everything he promised to win the election.
Showing a wisdom that has been mostly absent from public opinion in Latin America and here in the U.S., Washington did not pay much attention to Lula's speech and chose instead to observe closely if his first acts as president reflect the movement towards the political center with which he gathered a majority of the votes. The verdict is that it does.
The Bush administration has been careful not to attribute any special meaning to the fact that Lula devoted private time to Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Ch‡vez, who were present at his inauguration-an anecdotal fact that has been the subject of endless exegesis among commentators in Latin America and the extreme right here.
First of all, if face time counts politically, it should be noted that Lula spent more time with Sweden's prime minister and as much time with the president of Portugal and the Prince of Asturias, who was representing his father, King Juan Carlos of Spain, and with many other world leaders as well.
But, more important, Lula's attention to both Castro and Ch‡vez has been seen in Washington and in Brazil itself as a political gesture to placate Brazil's extreme left, which helped him get elected and is already becoming afraid of the centrism being shown by the president in his initial actions.
"It has no significance," said political analyst Ricardo Caldas at the University of Brasilia. "Having made many concessions to conservatives in his cabinet appointments, this is only for domestic consumption."
The White House, as well, is looking at what Lula is doing, and it is happy with it.
In a document handed to bankers Dec. 10 at the New York Federal Reserve, Finance Minister-designate Antonio Palocci pledged to maintain monetary and fiscal stability and to "fight inflation relentlessly." He noted that "there will be no solutions that are tentative, strange or heterodox. There is no room for experimentation in this field."
In naming former FleetBoston Finance Corp. executive Henrique Meirelles as Central Bank governor, he embraced two Workers Party demons at once: an international banker and member of the outgoing ruling Social Democratic Party. The nomination outraged one Workers Party senator, Helo’sa Helena, and the party barred her from the confirmation hearing and vote to avoid embarrassment.
"Basic economic issues, not social issues, will determine the success of the Lula government," says Christopher Garman, a political scientist at Tendencias consulting group in Sao Paulo. "Getting the economy moving again depends on market confidence."
Lula's moves have served to dispel some investor fears that he would abandon free-market policies or simply bungle economic management and trigger a debt default. Investment bank UBS Warburg even noted in a recent report, "So far, we view Lula as an 'improved clone' of President Cardoso"-a reference to a fact widely forgotten: that Lula's predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, also traveled to the center from the even more dogmatic left, from which he moved away only in the early 90s.
Businesspeople and scholars say they are impressed with the realism that Lula is showing in placating diverse constituencies and managing expectations. Even still, "There is a remarkable hopefulness in Brazil that in spite of all the problems, something good is going to come out of this government," says Margaret Keck, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University who has studied the Workers Party since its creation in 1980.
Lula's balanced attitude was further evidenced in a decision with which he killed not just two, but three birds with one stone: to provide funds for his fight against poverty he postponed for an indefinite time the projected purchase of 12 supersonic fighter-bombers for $700 million, thus both pleasing those who claimed this was an expenditure Brazil could not afford, sending the message to his basic constituency that he is serious about funding the war against poverty and showing the financial markets that he will not fund it by busting the budget.
Both leftists in Latin America and rightists here in the U.S. are fantasizing when they believe that Lula will run his government along the line followed by a Castro or a Ch‡vez. Not at all, said Luciano Dias, a political scientist at the Brazilian Institute of Political Studies in Brasilia: "Lula wouldn't even think of putting together a leftist nucleus in Latin America; he is too smart for that."
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com
