Posted on 10/04/2002 12:56:09 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Last July, with three months to go until Sunday's presidential election, leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told his ecstatic comrades: "It's never been this easy. The election is ours to lose."
The partisan crowd loved it. But political analysts were not so sure.
Those who had watched his past campaigns suspected that the man universally known here as Lula was tempting fate. In the 1989, 1994 and 1998 races, Lula led the opinion polls but ended up as the bridesmaid in every election.
This time may be different. The last polls before Election Day indicate that Lula has built a commanding lead, is picking up support from his opponents' camps and is close to winning an outright majority, avoiding a runoff with the second-place finisher on Oct. 27.
"If you'd told him back then that he'd still have more than 40 percent on the eve of the election, he'd have laughed and said, 'Don't get your hopes up, it's going to be a difficult campaign,' " said David Fleischer, a professor of politics at the University of Brasilia. "It was much easier than he thought it was going to be."
Lula can thank Jose Serra, the candidate put up by the governing coalition, and two other opponents -- former Rio de Janeiro state Gov. Anthony Garotinho and ex-finance minister Ciro Gomes -- for a 25-point lead in the polls.
None of his challengers has managed to light a fire under the voters like Lula has, and they are now fighting each other for second place.
For his part, Lula -- who has legally changed his surname to his nickname -- has waged a solid campaign free of gaffs and scandals, and he has built a coalition that is more broad and united than any he put together during his previous races.
A pragmatic approach to economic issues has been a key to his success.
Breaking with the past, Lula has ditched any talk about defaulting on the country's estimated $260 billion debt, an attempt to soothe worried bankers and investors. He also avoids talking about a tax on Brazil's superrich, a past campaign plank.
Yet, a Lula presidency would be seen as a setback for the Bush administration's plans to implement a Free Trade Area of the Americas. Although Lula has not come out against the plan, he has said that Brazil should only enter into a trade agreement if it is good for the country.
His close relations with leftist leaders like Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez are not likely to cheer the administration, either. Lula has met with both leaders in recent years and would balk at any suggestions that Brazil should cool its relations with them to please the United States.
"We want to have relations with all the countries of the world," Lula told reporters. "We are going to form alliances with Brazil's best interests in mind."
Like any good politician, Lula has done his best to make sure that everyone is happy. He has tried to placate Wall Street by committing himself to fighting inflation, maintaining a tight budget surplus and saying he would work with the International Monetary Fund, which provided Brazil a $30 billion loan in August -- its largest -- to contain a deepening economic crisis.
At home, he has promised to create 10 million jobs, increase the minimum wage and fight Brazil's shocking inequality. And he has done it all while insisting that he has not given up the core beliefs that helped the boy who never finished high school to become the best known politician in the country.
"The changes that I have gone through are changes that Brazilian society has gone through," Lula said when asked to compare the 21st century Lula with the man who ran in three past elections.
"The press has changed," he said, "owners of businesses have changed, culture has changed, the church has changed, political parties have changed, and obviously, if I had not changed with them I would have been left behind."
Lula's new personal and political maturity has spurred people who once considered him a close relative of the devil to jump on a bandwagon that now looks unstoppable.
Vera Loyola, a socialite known more for throwing extravagant parties for her dog than for any leftist sympathies, put a Worker's Party cap on her peroxide-blond head and handed out Lula pamphlets at Rio's main train station.
Some members of the government coalition have crossed party lines and endorsed Lula as capable and serious while, predictably, hundreds of artists, musicians, and intellectuals have thrown their weight behind him. More surprisingly, business leaders are slowly declaring they will support a Lula administration.
Although cynics suggest the entrepreneurs merely want to get on the right side of the leftist, at least one recent prominent adherent to the party cause assured voters he will vote for Lula not out of cynicism but out of faith the 56-year old has what it takes to lead the fifth most populous nation in the world.
"He has a practical knowledge of Brazil," said Eugenio Staub, owner of the Gradiente electronic company. "No matter what the topic of conversation is, he's seen it. What others learned doing their Ph.Ds in the United States or sitting in offices, he knows from having seen it on the ground. There's no way not to admire him."
With the main debate being fought over economic proposals, the support of a man like Staub lends credibility to a candidate who has struggled to persuade people he can be fiscally responsible and pro-business. Lula selected a prominent textile magnate as his running mate and has tried not to antagonize bankers and investors. But many people still see him as a dangerous gamble.
Lula may have economic measures up his sleeve for next year. But it won't be easy. Right now it is. The hard part will begin if he is elected.
Chavez: Lula da Silva positive change for South America (Castro-da Silva-Chavez axis)***But Chavez said Lula's lead in the race signaled that positive changes were sweeping South America - changes leading the region away from free market reforms that the Venezuelan president blames for increasing the gap between rich and poor. Another sign was that indigenous representatives grabbed an unprecedented 35 of 157 seats in recent Bolivian congressional elections, Chavez said. Such developments have given him confidence that movements like his own self-styled leftist "revolution" would "emerge not only in this continent but in the whole world," he added. The president spoke moments before leaving to participate in the World Summit in Johannesburg, South Africa. Chavez is an outspoken critic of unchecked capitalism and a fervent admirer of Latin American leftists like Cuban President Fidel Castro. ***
Cyanide found in Colombian corpse - FARC suspected of chemical warfare*** Survivors of the attack in San Adolfo, 230 miles south of Bogota, said rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, tossed bombs into the police compound that sent dark, gray smoke into their bunker and tunnels. "They were suffocating -- they couldn't breathe and felt their lungs were going to explode. They were immediately blinded by the gas," police Col. Francisco Henry Caicedo, citing survivors' reports, said in an interview days after the attack. On Friday, the Colombian prosecutor's office issued arrest warrants for the FARC leadership for "using illegal warfare methods in utilizing chemical weapons," a spokeswoman for the office told the Associated Press. Those charged include the top leader of the FARC, Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda. If poisonous gas were used, it would be the first such known case in Colombia's 38-year civil war, which pits the U.S.-backed military and an outlawed paramilitary group against the FARC and another rebel army.***
The Southern Threat*** U.S. Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill recently drew attention to the economic risks inherent in Brazil's more than $250 billion dollar international debt and caused great concern in the financial community when he said that "throwing the U.S. taxpayer's money at a political uncertainty in Brazil doesn't seem brilliant to me. . . . The situation there is driven by politics, . . . not . . . by economic conditions." A da Silva (Lula) presidency would likely mean Brazil's default on its debts, which, combined with the crisis in Argentina, could cause immense economic problems in all of Latin America. But worse than the economic downturn would be the effect on the Brazilian people of a radical regime moving toward dictatorship and the risk of destabilization in the region from a Castro-da Silva-Chavez axis.
A da Silva regime in Brazil could soon be followed by the success of the Communist guerrillas in Colombia and the establishment of anti-American regimes in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador (where in January 2000 radicals toppled the government in a few days, with help from military officers recruited by Chavez, though their success was short-lived). Thus, by the end of 2003, the United States might be faced with anti-American regimes in most of South America.
If those regimes recruited only one tenth of one percent of military-aged males for terrorist attacks on the United States, this could mean 30,000 terrorists coming from the south. In addition, many Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, including the PLO, have long collaborated with Castro against the United States and its allies; they and the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah have hidden among the sizable Middle Eastern communities in Brazil and Venezuela.***
December 29, 2000- Fidel, Saddam and Hugo --An improbable but growing friendship of three military revolutionaries***In a way, this bizarre trio represents the rebirth, a half century later, of the kind of nationalist populism spawned by General Juan Perón in Argentina and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam gained power through armed revolutions; Mr. Chávez, a paratroopers' lieutenant colonel, was democratically elected in 1998, after serving time for trying to overthrow the government in 1992.
Mr. Chávez is the most intriguing new leader to emerge in Latin America since Mr. Castro - and he is the lynchpin between Mr. Castro and Mr. Saddam. Although Cuba had been sending doctors and health workers to Iraq for years, there had not been any major contacts between the two countries until Mr. Chávez appeared on the scene. This fall, Mr. Chávez became the first democratically elected foreign head of state to visit Iraq since the Gulf War, ostensibly to invite Mr. Saddam to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. But it also was an in-your face gesture toward the United States.
….The Iraqi link is one aspect of Mr. Chávez's international involvements that the United States must not underestimate, with Cuba playing a central role. Since he took office in February 1999, Mr. Chávez has proclaimed his "identification" with the Cuban revolution. He visited Havana and entertained Mr. Castro in Caracas for five days last October. Mr. Castro treated Mr. Chávez as a son, an attitude seldom displayed by the Cuban leader toward any young people. During that same visit, Mr. Chávez granted Cuba large crude-oil price discounts, as he has done selectively elsewhere in the Caribbean, and agreed to help complete building a Cuban oil refinery.
Mr. Castro is Mr. Chávez's guide in the art of gently and gradually introducing authoritarian government to Venezuela. Mr. Chávez abolished the Senate and established a unicameral Parliament whose members support him. He has a new constitution, approved by a simple majority of voters in a referendum, that grants him considerable power.
To complicate matters and his relations with the United States, Mr. Chávez has been openly supporting leftist guerrilla movements in neighboring Colombia. The rebels control big swaths of Colombian territory, along with numerous coca plantations. Washington has already committed $1.3 billion, mainly in military aid, to the eradication of both guerrillas and coca plantations. This could foreshadow a big U.S. commitment in Colombia and an eventual conflict with Mr. Chávez that may interfere with the flow of oil north from Venezuela. ***
IRA is linked to 'axis of evil'*** THE IRA was linked to President Bush's "axis of evil" in Washington last night when congressional investigators revealed that the Bogota authorities believed Iranian terrorists had trained in the same part of Colombia as the Provisionals. Placing the IRA within a global network of terrorism, a report by the House International Relations Committee concluded that Irish, Iranian, Cuban and possibly Spanish groups had probably "been sharing techniques, honing their terrorism skills, using illicit drug proceeds in payment".
In an attempt to limit the political damage, Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, had earlier declined an invitation to appear before a hearing of the committee today on the IRA's relationship with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [Farc] narco-terrorists. "Colombian authorities assert that not only has the IRA operated in the former safe haven on behalf of the FARC, but also the Iranians, Cubans, and possibly Eta [Basque terrorists], among others," a summary of the committee's report said.
The inquiry was launched last summer after James Monaghan and Martin McAuley, both convicted of IRA offences, and Niall Connolly, Sinn Fein's representative in Cuba, were arrested in Bogota and charged with aiding the FARC. "Colombia is a potential breeding ground for international terror equalled perhaps only by Afghanistan, and the IRA findings are the strongest among these global links because of the arrests of the three Irish nationals and the accompanying evidence," said the summary.***
Venezuela-Libya Ties Coming to the Surface ***However, Venezuelan sources with longtime ties to Rich said negotiations with Crown Resources ended last year when a due diligence investigation turned up "troubling indications" of links with suspected Russian mobsters. Rich, who fled to Switzerland to avoid tax-evasion charges and was pardoned by former President Bill Clinton in January 2001, may have feared running afoul of legal authorities in the United States and Europe if he closed a deal with the firm. If the allegations involving Crown Resources are accurate, it would indicate that high-level officials in the Chavez regime are involved not only in questionable loan and investment negotiations with the governments of Libya and Cuba, but also with a company alleged to have ties to some members of Russia's criminal underworld.
Senior Venezuelan government officials believed to be involved in the Cienfuegos talks include PDVSA president Ali Rodriguez and Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton, according to military intelligence and oil industry sources in Caracas. The disclosure that Rodriguez is representing the Chavez regime in the negotiations has caused an uproar at the highest levels within PDVSA. Company vice president Jorge Kamkoff, a veteran oilman who is widely respected within the oil industry in Venezuela and internationally, has reportedly objected strenuously to undertaking any investments in the Cuban facility. Kamkoff did not return STRATFOR's calls seeking confirmation of these reports. However, other sources in PDVSA said July 26 that Kamkoff will be forced to retire in weeks or even days and likely will be replaced by Aires Barreto, a naturalized Venezuelan citizen who was born in Goa, India. Barreto reportedly is widely despised within PDVSA because he conducted a purge of veteran middle- and senior-level company managers during the controversial tenure of former PDVSA president Hector Ciavaldini.
STRATFOR's sources in the company also said that the Chavez regime's recent announcement that oil shipments to Cuba would be renewed Aug. 1, plus the disclosure about the possible investment in Cienfuegos, has infuriated many career oil-industry employees and managers. Moreover, their rage is being fanned by what appears to be an intensifying campaign of surveillance and intimidation of PDVSA employees who do not publicly support the Chavez regime's attempts to forge closer commercial and investment relations with Cuba and Libya. A recent internal company document warns that many PDVSA managers and employees are once again discussing the possibility of staging work slowdowns and possibly even a general strike in the coming weeks, which could shut down Venezuela's oil production and exports and possibly force Chavez out of office a second time after a brief coup earlier this year.***
What the loss of Brazil to "the Reds" would mean for the United States*** Brazil is the second largest and second most powerful country in the Western Hemisphere, comprising over half the population and territory of South America. As it borders on ten other countries in Latin America, Brazil would be well-positioned to serve as regional hegemon of the South American continent were it to find the political will to do so. This would be particularly true were it to test a nuclear weapon and become a nuclear power. Brazil also boasts the world's eighth largest economy.
Da Silva (Lula) has established extensive ties to international terrorism. He has been very critical of the US "War on Terror" and has professed admiration for such widely respected international statesmen as Saddam Hussein and Mohomar Quadafi. His election as President would greatly increase the prospect of a successful takeover of Columbia by the Communist FARC guerillas, which he fully supports. Mendes states that a Marxist regime in Brazil would also be well-positioned to help cause Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru to fall to would-be Marxist dictators and exploit the deepening economic crisis in Argentina, which I recently visited in June, and Paraguay. All told, a da Silva victory could well result in "as many as 300 million people" falling "under the control of anti-American dictatorships."
In 1990, da Silva co-founded the Forum of Sao Paulo with Cuban President Fidel Castro and former Nicaraguan Marxist President Daniel Ortega. The Forum is a kind of annual "Communist Party Congress" for Communists, anti-American terrorists and Marxist revolutionaries to meet together and strategize on how to best effect their plans for Communizing much if not most of Latin America. Venezuelan President and self-proclaimed Communist, Hugo Chavez has become a major power player in this organization since coming to power in 1998. Chavez is probably supporting the da Silva campaign to the tune of millions of dollars while Castro may also be committing hundreds of his intelligence operatives to help da Silva win the election.***
Brazilian presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, left, raises his hand with Rev. Jesse Jackson during a meeting with evangelical church leaders of Brazil in Sao Paulo, Sunday, Sept. 29, 2002. At a packed Baptist church, the Rev. Jesse Jackson stood at the altar and told a cheering congregation the county's leading presidential candidate had been "touched by God." Jackson's endorsement of the leftist Workers Party's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula, was aimed at a wider audience _ Brazil's evangelical Protestants.(AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)
Fire Democrats, Hire Republicans !!
GWB Is The Man !!
Snuff Saddam, NOW !!
Death To all Tyrant's !!
The Second Amendment...
America's Original Homeland Security !!
Freedom Is Worth Fighting For !!
Molon Labe !!
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