Comment: The realities behind the cult of Lula

Next week sees the retirement of the man described by Barack Obama as “the most popular politician on earth”. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, known simply as Lula, steps down after eight years in office, with a stratospheric approval rating of about 80 per cent. As a result, the Brazilian presidential election on October 3 will be a celebration of the past, as much as a signpost to the future. The almost certain winner will be Lula’s hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff.

Lula has not quite achieved the global renown and secular sainthood of Nelson Mandela. But the Lula and Mandela myths have something in common. In both cases, a moving personal struggle has merged with a compelling national story, turning a single man into a potent symbol of a whole country’s transformation.

The Lula story has already been turned into a film, even before the man has left office – and it is easy to see why. Lula was one of eight children in a poor family from one of the remotest regions of Brazil. He left school early, worked as a shoeshine boy and then as a lathe operator before becoming a militant trade-union leader. He was briefly imprisoned under Brazil’s military dictatorship. His first wife died young, while pregnant. But Lula triumphed over the odds to become “the poor boy who came from a shack to be president of Brazil”.

Brazil grew richer and more powerful during his presidency. But, like Mr Mandela, Lula resisted the temptation to cling to power. He has not tried to rewrite the rules to get a third term in office. In any case, with a protégé to succeed him, he will remain a very powerful figure.

Lula’s personal story has merged with the national narrative. For many years, Brazil has had something of a national inferiority complex. But like the poor boy made good, the country is now increasingly confident and assertive. The country has foreign reserves of more than $250bn and has recently discovered massive oil deposits offshore. Brazil provides the first letter of the Bric acronym that now defines the emergence of new, global powers. But it is less scary than China, less authoritarian than Russia and less chaotic than India.

The smiling, bearded avuncular Lula was the perfect, charismatic frontman for Brazil, reflected in successful campaigns to win the right to host both the Olympics and the World Cup. Lula’s formal retirement will allow Brazil to reflect on how far the country has come.

Of course, there are elements of myth in the Lula story. His personal and political life contain episodes of ruthlessness that are glossed over in the biopic version. Brazil’s transition to democracy took place well before he took office. The foundations of the country’s economic success were laid by the reforms of his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso. One of Lula’s biggest economic contributions was simply not to mess things up – and this was achieved by the abandonment of the far-left policies that he had once advocated. It is true that Lula inherited a fiscal crisis and handled it with determination and aplomb. But much of the subsequent economic boom was down to the lucky fact of a global commodities boom, powered by Chinese demand. Lula has gained deserved credit for his anti-poverty policies. He has done less well in fighting corruption.

The notion of Lula the freedom-fighter also needs qualification. At home, the outgoing president has defended democracy. But he has pursued a foreign policy that is either cynical or naive – praising authoritarians such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Fidel Castro in Cuba and pursuing an unlikely and irresponsible courtship of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.

Yet, for all the inevitable qualifications, Lula will deserve much of the hoopla and praise that surrounds his retirement. He will go down as the president who oversaw two historic transitions.

The first was the completion of Brazil’s embrace of capitalism and globalisation. In his early campaigns for the presidency, Lula had denounced “neoliberalism”. In office, he tackled inflation, paid back debt and fostered the conditions for Brazilian business to thrive internationally. As he noted wryly in a recent FT article: “There is no little irony in the fact that the union leader who once shouted ‘IMF out’ in the streets has become the president who paid off Brazil’s debts to the same institution – and ended up lending it $14bn.”

Brazil’s embrace of international capitalism under Lula has laid the foundation for the second transition, which has global significance. That is the emergence of a new “new world order” over the past decade. Unlike the previous “new world order” the latest iteration is not based on a “unipolar world” centred around the US and dominated by the west. The defining characteristic of this new “new world order” is the emergence of major economic and political powers in Asia and Latin America – with Brazil right at the forefront.

Just a few months ago, at a summit of the Brics, Lula proclaimed that – “Brazil, Russia, India and China have a fundamental role in creating a new international order”. Eight years ago, when Lula first took office, that statement would have sounded like hyperbole. Today, it simply sounds like a statement of fact. That is why the story of Brazil under Lula is much more than a movie-friendly myth.