If he wins the presidential election in October, it should go down because the political comeback of the last decade — if not the century. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former shoeshine boy and metalworker, benefited from an financial growth as Brazil’s president and left workplace in 2010 with an approval ranking above 80 per cent.
“I used to be conscious that if I reached the presidency of Brazil and my authorities didn’t work out, a employee would by no means once more give you the option to consider changing into president,” he says in an interview with the Monetary Instances at his marketing campaign’s media hub, a hip workplace area in a trendy neighbourhood of São Paulo.
Underneath his anointed successor, Dilma Rousseff, nevertheless, the economic system plunged right into a brutal two-year recession — partly because of insurance policies launched in his second time period. It has struggled to generate sturdy, sustained development ever since.
The leftwing Staff’ celebration (PT) he has dominated for 4 many years was revealed to have been on the centre of an enormous graft scheme whereas Lula and Rousseff had been in workplace. The US Division of Justice described it because the “largest overseas bribery case in historical past”.
Because the nation grew to become enraged on the extent of the corruption beneath PT rule, Lula was jailed in 2018 on graft prices — spending 580 days in a federal jail. Whereas he was in jail, Jair Bolsonaro, an anti-establishment far-right former military captain, gained the presidency.
But after being launched in 2019 on a procedural concern, Lula is now on the verge of a surprising second probability. In line with the opinion polls, the 76-year-old, who stays an icon of the Latin American left, is a robust favorite to win again the presidency in October from Bolsonaro.
With many Brazilians seemingly exhausted by Bolsonaro’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic and infinite tradition struggle antics, Lula — wearing a wise navy blue swimsuit and red-striped tie — is attempting to influence individuals that he’s a statesman who can convey political stability and haul the nation out of the financial gap it has been in for a lot of the previous decade.
“I’m very unhappy as a result of 12 years after I left the presidency, I discover Brazil poorer,” he says. “I discover extra unemployment, extra individuals going hungry and Brazil with a authorities that has very low credibility at residence and overseas.”
Lula greets his interviewers like outdated mates and the dialog contains an animated discourse in regards to the relative deserves of Brazilian and British soccer, ending along with his conclusion that the game has been the most important winner from globalisation.
Though there are nonetheless three months to go earlier than the primary spherical of voting on October 2, Lula is main in some polls by a margin of 10 proportion factors or extra. “It’s Lula’s election to lose,” says Oliver Stuenkel, a political skilled on the Getúlio Vargas Basis in São Paulo. “It’s extremely tough for Bolsonaro to be a aggressive candidate.”
With their sturdy bases of loyal supporters, Lula and Bolsonaro dominate the political panorama, leaving little area for challengers. However each are additionally divisive figures who generate a whole lot of resentment.
Certainly, they’ve fed off one another. Lula’s insistence that the corruption scandal was largely a conspiracy in opposition to his celebration generated a deep nicely of cynicism amongst many citizens, opening the way in which for a political outsider. Bolsonaro gained in 2018 by presenting himself because the anti-Lula candidate.
Now Lula is positioning himself because the antithesis of Bolsonaro, a politician identified for tirades in opposition to girls, gays and environmentalists. After practically 4 years of the present president, who champions conservative values and gun possession, Lula says Bolsonaro “has grow to be a pariah of humanity”.
His capability to attach with individuals stands in distinction to Bolsonaro, who, based on pollsters, alienated voters by means of his reckless angle to Covid and his lack of empathy for the 674,000 Brazilians who misplaced their lives.
For the enterprise neighborhood, the query is: if he does win, which model of himself will Lula govern as — the financial pragmatist of his first years or the extra ideological interventionist who emerged throughout his second time period?
Lula offers away few specifics about his plans: nevertheless exhausting you attempt to level his gaze in the direction of the long run, he prefers to recall previous triumphs and his dealings with former leaders comparable to Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder.
However he desires to be seen as a protected pair of arms. Lula stresses “three magic phrases in governing”: credibility, predictability and stability. At his age, he provides, he’s “extra skilled, extra seasoned and with a a lot higher want to get it proper”.
Looming recession
Lula’s first election to the presidency in 2002 was marked by a bit of nice political fortune: it coincided with an extended rally in world commodity markets that was sparked by speedy development in China. Together with a number of different resource-rich international locations within the area, Brazil’s economic system soared.
If he wins once more this October, nevertheless, Lula shall be confronted with a really completely different surroundings: a possible world recession and a stretched finances that leaves little room for discretionary spending.
Brazil is ready to develop between 1 and a couple of per cent this 12 months and unemployment has fallen under double digits for the primary time since 2016, however inflation is an enormous fear. Costs are rising 12 per cent a 12 months, despite the fact that the central financial institution has pushed up rates of interest to greater than 13 per cent. A beneficiant fiscal stimulus through the pandemic diminished deprivation however was withdrawn quickly after.
Excessive poverty jumped by greater than a 3rd final 12 months to 14 per cent, based on FGV Social. The analysis centre mentioned 36 per cent of the inhabitants didn’t come up with the money for for meals, based mostly on a Gallup ballot, in a rustic that is likely one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters.
Forward of the poll, Bolsonaro is betting on larger handouts to the poorest and is hoping to push by means of gasoline subsidies for truckers and taxi drivers.
Lula prefers hovering rhetoric over coverage element. He turns into emotional when he speaks about his personal deprivation as a baby. “I didn’t eat bread till I used to be seven,” he remembers. “I typically noticed my mom standing by the range with nothing to make for lunch or dinner.”
He says he’ll put off a constitutional cap on public expenditure and insists that social spending is an funding, not a price. “When poor individuals cease being very poor and grow to be shoppers of well being, training and items, the entire economic system grows,” he says.
But he additionally dismisses doubts about his dedication to fiscal duty. “I learnt very younger from my illiterate mom that I couldn’t spend greater than I earned.” He factors to his selection of vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, a centrist chief who as soon as ran in opposition to him, as proof of moderation.
Lula says he’ll title a finance minister who shouldn’t be an economist however a talented politician suggested by a gaggle of specialists, as he did in his first time period. He desires to evaluate labour reforms enacted after the PT left workplace and says he’ll overhaul the tax regime — a transfer the Bolsonaro authorities tried however failed — to make the wealthy pay extra.
Thomas Traumann, a political commentator who labored within the Rousseff administration, believes Brazil can count on a mix of Lula’s pragmatic first time period and the higher state interventionism of his second time period. However he dismisses fears of radicalism.
“The primary distinction from Lula immediately and the Lula who was president is now he centralises choices far more than earlier than,” says Traumann. “He trusts much less individuals. You’ll be able to depend them on one hand.”
Lula has little sympathy with enterprise individuals who fear about doable extremism and criticise him for an absence of latest concepts. “The Brazilian elite has a slave-owning mentality,” he says, referring to the criticism he acquired when his celebration formalised the employment of home staff. “You already know what they mentioned right here in Brazil when the site visitors was unhealthy? That it’s a shame that Lula allowed poor individuals to purchase vehicles.”
Regardless of his hostile rhetoric, Brazil’s financial elite shouldn’t be panicking on the concept of Lula’s return to energy. The fixed political turbulence of the Bolsonaro administration has unnerved the enterprise neighborhood regardless of the implementation of some financial reforms, comparable to limits on public sector pensions and a few privatisations. And Lula is a identified amount. “Lula shouldn’t be an institutional risk,” says one senior banker. “We’ll lose some high quality in financial coverage however it gained’t be a reversal.”
Alberto Ramos, chief Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs, is extra involved. “The general public sector in Brazil is astonishingly inefficient and Lula desires to empower it — and that’s not a superb factor,” he says.
‘The poor had been seen’
Lula’s biggest energy as a candidate is the reminiscence of the rising prosperity throughout his time in workplace.
Half an hour away from his marketing campaign workplace, alongside a avenue of tall, makeshift buildings painted in vivid colors, native activists have used the pandemic as a chance to launch a social enterprise hub that gives every little thing from vegetable rising courses in an allotment for girls dealing with home violence to microcredit. On this favela, or shanty city, named Paraisópolis, some 100,000 individuals dwell on the margins of São Paulo. Many recall Lula’s time in workplace fondly. “The poor had been seen,” says Gilson Rodrigues, a neighborhood chief.
Like others, he says issues worsened through the pandemic in a neighbourhood the place ambulance drivers worry to enter. Nobody has forgotten the corruption through the PT years. However Lula is seen as a frontrunner who transcends his celebration and isn’t motivated by private acquire. “Lula stole however gave to the poor, Bolsonaro stole however gave to the wealthy,” quips a younger supply driver, reflecting a well-liked notion.
In the course of the Lula years, Brazil sharply diminished poverty by means of social welfare programmes comparable to Bolsa Familia — a money switch programme for the poorest.
Underneath Rousseff, nevertheless, the attain of the Brazilian state into the economic system expanded additional as interventionist insurance policies took maintain. Her authorities’s meddling and years of unfastened fiscal coverage had been blamed for hovering inflation and Brazil’s worst recession on document.
The PT was additionally on the centre of Latin America’s largest corruption scandal, often known as Lava Jato (Automotive Wash), centred on kickbacks for contracts with state-controlled oil group Petrobras. Together with her recognition within the doldrums, Dilma was impeached in 2016.
By the top of the Automotive Wash investigation, a number of hundred businessmen and politicians had been convicted. Lula himself was discovered responsible of receiving bribes within the type of favours associated to a beachside residence and a rustic home. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail, eliminating him from an anticipated run within the 2018 presidential race.
Launched from jail pending a brand new attraction, his conviction was overturned by the supreme courtroom in April 2021 on a jurisdictional technicality. Lula has at all times insisted that the investigation was politically motivated. The truth that the decide who initially convicted Lula, Sergio Moro, then went on to function Bolsonaro’s justice minister added weight to that view.
“If there was corruption, it was investigated and folks paid a value for having paid a mistake,” Lula says. “What occurred in Brazil was a political motion to attempt to destroy the picture of many individuals and forestall me from changing into president in 2018.”
Bearing arms
Contained in the cramped Brasília workplace of Eduardo Bolsonaro, third son of the president and a congressman for São Paulo state, are the trimmings of his household’s rightwing world view: miniature figures of Donald Trump, the previous US president, a duplicate revolver and a framed copy of the second modification of the American structure guaranteeing the precise to bear arms. A tall, neatly dressed former federal policeman, the younger Bolsanaro rails in opposition to the supreme courtroom and mainstream media, who he says are clamouring for the return of Lula.
He insists the polls are flawed and that the race is tied. His father, he says, is a “freedom fighter” who was one of many few world leaders to face in opposition to Covid restrictions, whereas Lula is a dictator within the making.
Will his father concede if Lula prevails? Bolsonaro has mentioned that solely God may take away him from energy. Eduardo repeats the president’s declare that the long-established digital voting system have to be modified earlier than the election however is not going to touch upon the implications if it’s not. Lula himself dismisses solutions of a post-election disaster just like the US Capitol rebel or navy intervention. “Bolsonaro is somebody who bluffs,” says Lula. The president could desire a coup however “he could be on his personal”.
Brazil’s allies shall be watching intently. Lula guarantees to convey the nation again to the worldwide stage as an environmentally accountable and socially conscious main creating energy. He says he’ll introduce a brand new border drive and sharply cut back deforestation, citing his success within the first time period as proof of his potential to ship. “We now have to make the preservation of the Amazon a high precedence.”
His views on geopolitics shall be much less welcome, with the west now enmeshed in a brand new chilly struggle with Russia and China. Lula has beforehand criticised Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as partly accountable for the Russian invasion. However he insists that Brazil is not going to be drawn into taking sides within the Ukraine struggle, and that negotiations have to be tried. He criticises the US for its “lack of persistence” in looking for peace and sees himself as a possible negotiator who can communicate to all sides, together with China, Brazil’s largest buying and selling associate, and the US, its ally and largest overseas investor.
A victory this October would hand him the chance to outline his legacy for posterity. He has mentioned he is not going to run for a fourth time period. Veteran pollster Carlos Augusto Montenegro says that to safe his place in historical past, Lula ought to appoint a broad cupboard of specialists and try actual reforms to Brazil’s dysfunctional political system.
Lula insists that his fast precedence shall be bettering social circumstances. Can he slay Brazil’s twin demons of starvation and poverty? Lula solutions with a gruff chuckle: “If I handle that, my expensive pal, I’ll go to heaven.”
If he wins the presidential election in October, it should go down because the political comeback of the last decade — if not the century. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former shoeshine boy and metalworker, benefited from an financial growth as Brazil’s president and left workplace in 2010 with an approval ranking above 80 per cent.
“I used to be conscious that if I reached the presidency of Brazil and my authorities didn’t work out, a employee would by no means once more give you the option to consider changing into president,” he says in an interview with the Monetary Instances at his marketing campaign’s media hub, a hip workplace area in a trendy neighbourhood of São Paulo.
Underneath his anointed successor, Dilma Rousseff, nevertheless, the economic system plunged right into a brutal two-year recession — partly because of insurance policies launched in his second time period. It has struggled to generate sturdy, sustained development ever since.
The leftwing Staff’ celebration (PT) he has dominated for 4 many years was revealed to have been on the centre of an enormous graft scheme whereas Lula and Rousseff had been in workplace. The US Division of Justice described it because the “largest overseas bribery case in historical past”.
Because the nation grew to become enraged on the extent of the corruption beneath PT rule, Lula was jailed in 2018 on graft prices — spending 580 days in a federal jail. Whereas he was in jail, Jair Bolsonaro, an anti-establishment far-right former military captain, gained the presidency.
But after being launched in 2019 on a procedural concern, Lula is now on the verge of a surprising second probability. In line with the opinion polls, the 76-year-old, who stays an icon of the Latin American left, is a robust favorite to win again the presidency in October from Bolsonaro.
With many Brazilians seemingly exhausted by Bolsonaro’s mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic and infinite tradition struggle antics, Lula — wearing a wise navy blue swimsuit and red-striped tie — is attempting to influence individuals that he’s a statesman who can convey political stability and haul the nation out of the financial gap it has been in for a lot of the previous decade.
“I’m very unhappy as a result of 12 years after I left the presidency, I discover Brazil poorer,” he says. “I discover extra unemployment, extra individuals going hungry and Brazil with a authorities that has very low credibility at residence and overseas.”
Lula greets his interviewers like outdated mates and the dialog contains an animated discourse in regards to the relative deserves of Brazilian and British soccer, ending along with his conclusion that the game has been the most important winner from globalisation.
Though there are nonetheless three months to go earlier than the primary spherical of voting on October 2, Lula is main in some polls by a margin of 10 proportion factors or extra. “It’s Lula’s election to lose,” says Oliver Stuenkel, a political skilled on the Getúlio Vargas Basis in São Paulo. “It’s extremely tough for Bolsonaro to be a aggressive candidate.”
With their sturdy bases of loyal supporters, Lula and Bolsonaro dominate the political panorama, leaving little area for challengers. However each are additionally divisive figures who generate a whole lot of resentment.
Certainly, they’ve fed off one another. Lula’s insistence that the corruption scandal was largely a conspiracy in opposition to his celebration generated a deep nicely of cynicism amongst many citizens, opening the way in which for a political outsider. Bolsonaro gained in 2018 by presenting himself because the anti-Lula candidate.
Now Lula is positioning himself because the antithesis of Bolsonaro, a politician identified for tirades in opposition to girls, gays and environmentalists. After practically 4 years of the present president, who champions conservative values and gun possession, Lula says Bolsonaro “has grow to be a pariah of humanity”.
His capability to attach with individuals stands in distinction to Bolsonaro, who, based on pollsters, alienated voters by means of his reckless angle to Covid and his lack of empathy for the 674,000 Brazilians who misplaced their lives.
For the enterprise neighborhood, the query is: if he does win, which model of himself will Lula govern as — the financial pragmatist of his first years or the extra ideological interventionist who emerged throughout his second time period?
Lula offers away few specifics about his plans: nevertheless exhausting you attempt to level his gaze in the direction of the long run, he prefers to recall previous triumphs and his dealings with former leaders comparable to Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder.
However he desires to be seen as a protected pair of arms. Lula stresses “three magic phrases in governing”: credibility, predictability and stability. At his age, he provides, he’s “extra skilled, extra seasoned and with a a lot higher want to get it proper”.
Looming recession
Lula’s first election to the presidency in 2002 was marked by a bit of nice political fortune: it coincided with an extended rally in world commodity markets that was sparked by speedy development in China. Together with a number of different resource-rich international locations within the area, Brazil’s economic system soared.
If he wins once more this October, nevertheless, Lula shall be confronted with a really completely different surroundings: a possible world recession and a stretched finances that leaves little room for discretionary spending.
Brazil is ready to develop between 1 and a couple of per cent this 12 months and unemployment has fallen under double digits for the primary time since 2016, however inflation is an enormous fear. Costs are rising 12 per cent a 12 months, despite the fact that the central financial institution has pushed up rates of interest to greater than 13 per cent. A beneficiant fiscal stimulus through the pandemic diminished deprivation however was withdrawn quickly after.
Excessive poverty jumped by greater than a 3rd final 12 months to 14 per cent, based on FGV Social. The analysis centre mentioned 36 per cent of the inhabitants didn’t come up with the money for for meals, based mostly on a Gallup ballot, in a rustic that is likely one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters.
Forward of the poll, Bolsonaro is betting on larger handouts to the poorest and is hoping to push by means of gasoline subsidies for truckers and taxi drivers.
Lula prefers hovering rhetoric over coverage element. He turns into emotional when he speaks about his personal deprivation as a baby. “I didn’t eat bread till I used to be seven,” he remembers. “I typically noticed my mom standing by the range with nothing to make for lunch or dinner.”
He says he’ll put off a constitutional cap on public expenditure and insists that social spending is an funding, not a price. “When poor individuals cease being very poor and grow to be shoppers of well being, training and items, the entire economic system grows,” he says.
But he additionally dismisses doubts about his dedication to fiscal duty. “I learnt very younger from my illiterate mom that I couldn’t spend greater than I earned.” He factors to his selection of vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin, a centrist chief who as soon as ran in opposition to him, as proof of moderation.
Lula says he’ll title a finance minister who shouldn’t be an economist however a talented politician suggested by a gaggle of specialists, as he did in his first time period. He desires to evaluate labour reforms enacted after the PT left workplace and says he’ll overhaul the tax regime — a transfer the Bolsonaro authorities tried however failed — to make the wealthy pay extra.
Thomas Traumann, a political commentator who labored within the Rousseff administration, believes Brazil can count on a mix of Lula’s pragmatic first time period and the higher state interventionism of his second time period. However he dismisses fears of radicalism.
“The primary distinction from Lula immediately and the Lula who was president is now he centralises choices far more than earlier than,” says Traumann. “He trusts much less individuals. You’ll be able to depend them on one hand.”
Lula has little sympathy with enterprise individuals who fear about doable extremism and criticise him for an absence of latest concepts. “The Brazilian elite has a slave-owning mentality,” he says, referring to the criticism he acquired when his celebration formalised the employment of home staff. “You already know what they mentioned right here in Brazil when the site visitors was unhealthy? That it’s a shame that Lula allowed poor individuals to purchase vehicles.”
Regardless of his hostile rhetoric, Brazil’s financial elite shouldn’t be panicking on the concept of Lula’s return to energy. The fixed political turbulence of the Bolsonaro administration has unnerved the enterprise neighborhood regardless of the implementation of some financial reforms, comparable to limits on public sector pensions and a few privatisations. And Lula is a identified amount. “Lula shouldn’t be an institutional risk,” says one senior banker. “We’ll lose some high quality in financial coverage however it gained’t be a reversal.”
Alberto Ramos, chief Latin America economist at Goldman Sachs, is extra involved. “The general public sector in Brazil is astonishingly inefficient and Lula desires to empower it — and that’s not a superb factor,” he says.
‘The poor had been seen’
Lula’s biggest energy as a candidate is the reminiscence of the rising prosperity throughout his time in workplace.
Half an hour away from his marketing campaign workplace, alongside a avenue of tall, makeshift buildings painted in vivid colors, native activists have used the pandemic as a chance to launch a social enterprise hub that gives every little thing from vegetable rising courses in an allotment for girls dealing with home violence to microcredit. On this favela, or shanty city, named Paraisópolis, some 100,000 individuals dwell on the margins of São Paulo. Many recall Lula’s time in workplace fondly. “The poor had been seen,” says Gilson Rodrigues, a neighborhood chief.
Like others, he says issues worsened through the pandemic in a neighbourhood the place ambulance drivers worry to enter. Nobody has forgotten the corruption through the PT years. However Lula is seen as a frontrunner who transcends his celebration and isn’t motivated by private acquire. “Lula stole however gave to the poor, Bolsonaro stole however gave to the wealthy,” quips a younger supply driver, reflecting a well-liked notion.
In the course of the Lula years, Brazil sharply diminished poverty by means of social welfare programmes comparable to Bolsa Familia — a money switch programme for the poorest.
Underneath Rousseff, nevertheless, the attain of the Brazilian state into the economic system expanded additional as interventionist insurance policies took maintain. Her authorities’s meddling and years of unfastened fiscal coverage had been blamed for hovering inflation and Brazil’s worst recession on document.
The PT was additionally on the centre of Latin America’s largest corruption scandal, often known as Lava Jato (Automotive Wash), centred on kickbacks for contracts with state-controlled oil group Petrobras. Together with her recognition within the doldrums, Dilma was impeached in 2016.
By the top of the Automotive Wash investigation, a number of hundred businessmen and politicians had been convicted. Lula himself was discovered responsible of receiving bribes within the type of favours associated to a beachside residence and a rustic home. He was sentenced to 12 years in jail, eliminating him from an anticipated run within the 2018 presidential race.
Launched from jail pending a brand new attraction, his conviction was overturned by the supreme courtroom in April 2021 on a jurisdictional technicality. Lula has at all times insisted that the investigation was politically motivated. The truth that the decide who initially convicted Lula, Sergio Moro, then went on to function Bolsonaro’s justice minister added weight to that view.
“If there was corruption, it was investigated and folks paid a value for having paid a mistake,” Lula says. “What occurred in Brazil was a political motion to attempt to destroy the picture of many individuals and forestall me from changing into president in 2018.”
Bearing arms
Contained in the cramped Brasília workplace of Eduardo Bolsonaro, third son of the president and a congressman for São Paulo state, are the trimmings of his household’s rightwing world view: miniature figures of Donald Trump, the previous US president, a duplicate revolver and a framed copy of the second modification of the American structure guaranteeing the precise to bear arms. A tall, neatly dressed former federal policeman, the younger Bolsanaro rails in opposition to the supreme courtroom and mainstream media, who he says are clamouring for the return of Lula.
He insists the polls are flawed and that the race is tied. His father, he says, is a “freedom fighter” who was one of many few world leaders to face in opposition to Covid restrictions, whereas Lula is a dictator within the making.
Will his father concede if Lula prevails? Bolsonaro has mentioned that solely God may take away him from energy. Eduardo repeats the president’s declare that the long-established digital voting system have to be modified earlier than the election however is not going to touch upon the implications if it’s not. Lula himself dismisses solutions of a post-election disaster just like the US Capitol rebel or navy intervention. “Bolsonaro is somebody who bluffs,” says Lula. The president could desire a coup however “he could be on his personal”.
Brazil’s allies shall be watching intently. Lula guarantees to convey the nation again to the worldwide stage as an environmentally accountable and socially conscious main creating energy. He says he’ll introduce a brand new border drive and sharply cut back deforestation, citing his success within the first time period as proof of his potential to ship. “We now have to make the preservation of the Amazon a high precedence.”
His views on geopolitics shall be much less welcome, with the west now enmeshed in a brand new chilly struggle with Russia and China. Lula has beforehand criticised Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as partly accountable for the Russian invasion. However he insists that Brazil is not going to be drawn into taking sides within the Ukraine struggle, and that negotiations have to be tried. He criticises the US for its “lack of persistence” in looking for peace and sees himself as a possible negotiator who can communicate to all sides, together with China, Brazil’s largest buying and selling associate, and the US, its ally and largest overseas investor.
A victory this October would hand him the chance to outline his legacy for posterity. He has mentioned he is not going to run for a fourth time period. Veteran pollster Carlos Augusto Montenegro says that to safe his place in historical past, Lula ought to appoint a broad cupboard of specialists and try actual reforms to Brazil’s dysfunctional political system.
Lula insists that his fast precedence shall be bettering social circumstances. Can he slay Brazil’s twin demons of starvation and poverty? Lula solutions with a gruff chuckle: “If I handle that, my expensive pal, I’ll go to heaven.”
