Global Policy Forum

By Alex Bellos

Brazil's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said yesterday that his government's primary aim was to eradicate hunger, but he warned that there was no miracle cure for the country's vast social and economic problems. In his first announcement since he won the presidency by a landslide on Sunday, the man known as Lula singled out poverty as the country's most pressing issue and said he would create a ministry for social emergency to tackle hunger. "If every citizen is able to eat three times a day, I will have fulfilled my life's mission", he said at a press conference in a Sao Paulo hotel.

Lula, 57, is the first Brazilian leader to have come from a poor background and the first leftwinger elected to the presidency. He won 61% of the vote in the runoff against Jose Serra, the centrist government's candidate. The political scientist Jairo Nicolau said: "We are living through many major symbolic changes. Not just gaining a leftwing president, but the peaceful tranference of power and the quality of political debate shows that Brazilian democracy is revealing an unforeseen maturity."

Hundreds of thousands of Lula's supporters poured on to the street on Sunday night to celebrate the beginning of a new political era. "Brazil voted for change. Hope overcame fear," Lula said yesterday, beginning an 18-minute speech to the nation. Diverging from his usual spontaneous style, he read the entire text and refused to answer questions. Dressed in his now-usual smart suit with a red badge in the lapel, he said his government would be fiscally responsible for riding out the current deep economic crisis.

Brazil teeters on the verge of recession, and has a huge debt. Lula said that he would honour all contracts signed by his predecessor and would keep inflation in hand. The statement was aimed at calming the international markets, which have piled pressure on the Brazilian economy in recent months and caused the real to lose about 40% of its value. Analysts in New York and Sao Paulo welcomed Lula's comments. Today Lula will announce his transition team before he moves into the presidential palace on January 1.

He warned of hard times ahead and said there would be austerity with public money but he added that it was possible to be fiscally efficient while improving the social conditions for millions of Brazilians. More than a quarter of the country's 175 million people live in poverty and the country has one of the most unequal distributions of wealth in the world. His speech also hinted that Brazil would be more aggressive in fighting for its "sovereignty" in negotiations for the Free Trade of the Americas pact and against rich states' agricultural "protectionism".

A former lathe operator and union firebrand, Lula won the presidency on his fourth attempt. Much of the Brazilian press reaction to his victory concentrated on his life story from poor economic migrant to most powerful man in the land. The Jornal do Brasil, referring to his surname Da Silva, the most common name in the country, said: "It is the perfect name for this immense territory in South America whose people, mostly poor, have led a genuine Silva to the presidency for the first time."

Lula was the most popular candidate in all but one state, but his Workers party won only three of the 27 state governors, none among the 10 biggest and most powerful.

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