Scandal taints working-class hero Lula
An ex-metalworker who became one of Brazil's most popular presidents, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva now sees his legacy under threat.
|||Sau Paulo - An ex-metalworker who became one of Brazil's most popular presidents, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva now sees his legacy under threat after he was implicated in a corruption probe.
Lula, as he is known to all in Brazil, left office in 2011 as a blue-collar hero who presided over a watershed boom and helped lift tens of millions of people from poverty.
Brazil's first democratically elected leftist was so widely admired as president that Foreign Policy magazine called him a “rock star” and his US counterpart Barack Obama referred to him as “the man.”
Known for his charisma and common touch, Lula's popularity in Brazil and the success of the economy during a period of high commodities prices helped him ride out numerous corruption scandals. When he stepped down after two terms, he basked in 80 percent popularity ratings.
But five years after helping handpicked successor Dilma Rousseff take his place, graft allegations have left him fighting for his reputation - and potentially his freedom.
Rousseff meanwhile is in the midst of a crucial weekend for her political survival, culminating Sunday with expected nationwide protests calling for her impeachment.
Lula, a gruff, bearded 70-year-old, was briefly detained for questioning earlier this month in the investigation into a massive embezzlement and bribery conspiracy centred on state oil giant Petrobras.
Prosecutors accused Lula of accepting “many” favors from corrupt construction companies seeking Petrobras contracts.
Lula, who was not charged, has rejected any involvement in the Petrobras scheme.
Lula grew up in deep poverty, the last of eight children born to a family of farmers in the arid, hard-scrabble northeastern state of Pernambuco.
He had little formal education, quitting grade school to help his family get by.
When he was seven, his family joined a wave of migration to the industrial heartland of Sao Paulo state, where Lula worked as a shoeshine boy and street vendor before becoming a steel worker.
He rose to become president of his trade union, less than a decade after joining.
He was the force behind big strikes in the 1970s that challenged the military dictatorship in power at the time. And in 1980, Lula founded the Workers' Party, first standing as its candidate for president nine years later.
Lula made three unsuccessful presidential bids from 1989 to 1998, each time chipping away at the establishment parties and the idea that a poor, uneducated labor leader could never be president of Brazil. The fourth time, in 2002, he succeeded, taking office on January 1, 2003.
Lula soon calmed market fears of a radical surge to the left by adopting fiscally responsible policies, dark suits and a calm, pragmatic approach.
He also had the good fortune to preside over a so-called golden decade for Latin America, when a rising China's ravenous demand for raw materials propelled the region's economies to a historic period of growth.
Brazil's economy hit a breakneck 7.5 percent growth in 2010, his final year in office.
Despite a series of scandals in his first term - most notably a congressional vote-buying case that felled his chief of staff - Lula coasted to reelection in 2006.
He became a star of the emerging markets boom of the 2000s, reinforcing alliances across the world's developing nations.
Constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms, he cemented his legacy by helping Rousseff into power.
But his post-presidential life has been fraught with difficulties. In October 2011 he was diagnosed with cancer in the larynx and successfully underwent chemotherapy.
Though he has flirted repeatedly with the possibility of running to succeed Rousseff in 2018, he is an increasingly divisive figure, loved by his leftist, working-class base but loathed by the better-off.
With Brazil's economy in deep recession, Rousseff highly unpopular, and the Petrobras corruption scandal heating up, Lula's political mastery has never been under greater challenge.
AFP