Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva claims that his administration governs for all, especially the less privileged. The devil is that, as in the days of former President Fernando Henrique, speculators, bankers, multinationals, large land owners, and those who live off investments are privileged.

Workers continue to struggle, or worse yet, considering that taxes, charges, contributions, fees for public services, and cost of living have gone up. Once again, in the middle of the Workers Party administration, those who live on salaries suffer, not to mention those who don’t have salaries and survive on odd jobs, or not even that.

It would be an injustice to imagine that everything keeps happening by way of the President’s personal decisions. Of course if he could, if it were solely up to him, income distribution would have taken place, even if based on a Robin Hood’s philosophy, that of taking from the rich to give the poor. Then, why has a Robin Hood that takes from the poor to give the rich prevailed?

The answer appears clear and may serve as lesson for the next presidential elections: there aren’t knight in shining armor candidates, much less presidents. They don’t exist, men able to hold all absolute truths and - harder still - power to change on free will the political, economic, and social processes.  At most, they are naïve or scoundrels, those who so display themselves.

Relinquishing to Power Holders

The past did not bother to follow its course so that we now negate it, otherwise why look back. Only in the last decades, how many times have we been deluded with the image of the nation knight in shining armor?

Jânio Quadros, João Goulart, Castello Branco and the presidents-generals, then Tancredo Neves, whom death spared from a respectable failure. Fernando Collor, Fernando Henrique, and, finally, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

They all presented themselves as bearers of solutions capable of changing Brazil, but every single one, without exception, Tancredo replaced by Sarney, relinquished to the predominance of rich over poor rule. The argument has been the same: it couldn’t be different. To avoid chaos, national implosion and dissolution, better to follow the impositions of the real power holders.

To some, leftover perks, since they were included in the lineup of the privileged. When they no longer were and simply tricked us. Appropriately, the embarrassment of naming names is not called for, but one needs to look no further than the way former Presidents live or lived. At a minimum, they organize foundations, associations, and even design graves destined to celebrate their envisioned future glory.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seemed to diverge from that model. For such he got elected. He was a representative of the sufferers, a lathe worker turned President to provide and represent many hoping for changes. Where are the promises to change everything, to implement public policies to abate the bitterness of the population and even charge the powerful a price for the unjust use of power?

The Workers Party Represents One Class Only

In two years, everything’s fallen apart. Once again, the impossibility of one man alone to realize dreams is evident. In Lula’s case, with the additional failure of having reached power supported by a self-claimed different party. It was, as they proclaimed, the greatest expression of the humiliated.

Evidently it was none of that. The Workers Party, at most, represents the state of São Paulo steelworkers’ union, those who for their merits of resistance and organization were able to put themselves slightly above other workers’ line of poverty. The party has no commitments to the floor below, much less to the basement.

Nor to the middle class, marching to the beat toward proletarization. Yet graver, the party allowed itself to become sensitized by the false impression of authority of running a government in the handcuffs of the good old boys, that is, the elite. President Lula and his party have fallen victims of the same bacteria: they became complacent under the impression that they give orders, when in reality they receive.

The result is there: two years after taking office and after three appearances at the World Social Forum and the World Economic Forum, they are being charged by some and tolerated by others. In Porto Alegre, they could not explain why they serve to Davos, and in Davos, got no respect for not serving to Porto Alegre.

The first half of the term has passed. The economic model is the same as the predecessor’s, a declared elitist who eluded the country with books perhaps not even written by him, but with all certainty, forgotten by him. The social reforms remain on paper.

From it all, one conclusion: it’s no use to keep waiting for another nation knight in shining armor capable of promising national recovery. As long as we don’t realize that the capacity to change is within each of us, nothing will be done.

Carlos Chagas writes for the Rio's daily Tribuna da Imprensa and is a representative of the Brazilian Press Association, in Brasília. He welcomes your comments at carloschagas@hotmail.com.

Translated from the Portuguese by Eduardo Assumpção de Queiroz. He is a freelance translator, with a degree in Business and almost 20 years of experience working in the fields of economics, communications, social and political sciences, and sports. He lives in São Paulo, Brazil. His email: eaqus@terra.com.br.

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