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Brazil’s Silva sees record approval rating
SAO PAULO — Brazil’s president is seeing record approval ratings with just over two weeks left before he leaves office. The Ibope polling institute says Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s personal approval ratings are now at 87 percent. That’s up from 83 percent at the same time last year.
Silva leaves office Jan. 1 after eight years. Brazil’s presidents are limited to two consecutive terms. He will be handing over power to his hand-chosen successor, Dilma Rousseff, who won election in October.
The Legacy of Brazil’s Lula da Silva
BUENOS AIRES — He couldn’t do it in 1989, in 1994, or in 1998. But on Oct. 27, 2002, the man who everyone in Brazil knew by the nickname “Lula” conquered the highest public office in the country.
Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva took office on Jan. 1, 2003, having won 46.4 percent of the popular vote — twice as many as the second-place candidate, José Serra, of the conservative Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).
“I, who so many times was accused of not having a university diploma, won my first diploma as President of the Republic of Brazil,” said the teary-eyed founder and historic leader of the Workers Party (PT).
Lula is of the people
Brazilian society identifies with the president, according to William Gonçalves, a professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.
“Lula is a man of the people. He understands their necessities and speaks like them,” Gonçalves said. “The president made mistakes, whether they were factual or because of his lack of traditional education, the cultivated, upper-middle class would criticize him. But those objections didn’t hurt Lula’s image in the minds of people in general.”
It was not just his simple and direct style that earned him popular admiration, but also his social programs designed to bridge the gap between the weathy and the poor. One of the best known of these programs is Bolsa Família, which he implemented shortly after taking office and which, according to government figures, reaches 12 million homes.
The program gives poor families a monthly subsidy of between 22 and 200 reais per child (approximately U.S.$12 to $117).
Thanks to this and other measures, 30 million people entered the ranks of the middle cass and 19 million people managed to make it out of extreme poverty during Lula’s eight years in office, according to a study conducted by the Center of Social Policy at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (CPS-FGV) and published by the Argentine daily Clarín.
What’s more, there was a noticeable impact on wealth distribution: 40 percent of the poorest Brazilians increased their wealth 3.15 percent, while the richest 10 percent saw their wealth increase at a more modest 1.09 percent, according to the CPS-FGV.
Lula da Silva has his own oil field according to Petrobras
Brazil’s state-run Petrobras confirmed that oil fields recently discovered offshore contained 8.3 billion barrels of recoverable crude and gas — and said the biggest field was being renamed “Lula.” That nomenclature happens to be the nickname of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who steps down after overseeing eight years of prosperity in Brazil capped by the oil discoveries.
Petrobras explained, though, that the decision to change the name of the field from Tupi to Lula came from its tradition of naming such deepwater zones after marine animals. Lula in Portuguese means squid. The president formally added the nickname to his full name, and he is universally known as Lula in the country.
“It’s not my name — it’s the name of a crustacean,” Lula protested when asked whether the move was to honor him, after he bolstered Petrobras’s control over the oil.
Brazil hopes the fields will propel it into the top league of oil exporting nations, securing its drive to become the world’s fifth-biggest economy in a few years’ time.
Education in Brazil no longer bottom of the class
(The Economist) – In 2000 the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries, decided to find out how much children were learning at school. At the time, only half of Brazilian children finished primary education. Three out of four adults were functionally illiterate and more than one in ten totally so. And yet few Brazilians seemed to care. Rich parents used private schools; poor ones knew too little to understand how badly their children were being taught at the public ones. The president at the time, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, saw a chance to break their complacency. Though Brazil is not a member of the OECD he entered it in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Brazil came last.
A decade on, it is clear that the shock was salutary. On December 7th the fourth PISA study was published, and Brazil showed solid gains in all three subjects tested: reading, mathematics and science (see chart 1). The test now involves 65 countries or parts of them. Brazil came 53rd in reading and science. The OECD is sufficiently impressed that it has selected Brazil as a case study of “Encouraging lessons from a large federal system”.
Brazil: No Mideast peace with US mediation
After recognizing Palestinian state within 1967 borders, Brazilian President Lula da Silva calls for end to American ‘guardianship’ in region.
Former US President Jimmy Carter said: “I am very happy to see that Brazil recognized the Palestinian state with the 1967 borders. We cannot count on the United States alone to bring peace, since it agrees with almost everything that Israel does. Brazil can help because it has a lot of influence among developing countries. Brazil can be one of the leaders of this process.”
The Obama administration has been disappointing and inadequate for Latin America.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
