The election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil's current president was a historic victory. He was the first leftist elected leader in several decades to the highest office. During his election, one of his campaign banners promised the electorate "change".

Many leftwing politicians who founded the PT worked tireless in three consecutive campaigns to get Lula elected. On the fourth attempt, their hard-worked seemed to have paid off. But by the fourth attempt, things had changed.

Lula demanded that his candidacy be given the right to form an alliance with the PL, Liberal Party. Lula gave the vice-president position to business mogul, José Alencar.

The PT party leaders had changed the once stringent based party platform. The PT no longer called for the default of Brazil's external debt or even an audit of its external debt.

During Lula's 2002 victory other forces were at work inside the Brazilian political system. The IMF demanded that in accordance to future loans by the agency that the candidates from the Left, anti-market, sign to certain budgetary and monetary restrictions.

Even after their signatures the market continued to plummet. International credit was becoming scarce for the Brazilian economy. Many analysts predicted that Brazil's debt was unsustainable in the short-term.

With Lula's victory the market continued on the edge. Thus, Lula had to regain market credibility to avoid any further damage to the weakened economy. It is pointless to say, Lula proved he was able to deliver on the promises to please the markets. Brazil avoided default but the measures taken were drastic.

In 2003, in order to meet the primary surplus targets set by the IMF, Lula had to block over 14 billion reais from the federal budget. Roughly 1.5 billion reais was quickly unblocked. Further blocks were made to Brazil's budget in order to meet a primary surplus that went way above the minimum required by the IMF.

In 2004, another 6 billion reais were cut from the budget after revenues fell short of their estimates. 80 percent of the PETI, the anti child-labor program was cut. Once again Lula promised to satisfy the market.

Exceeding the minimum requirements seems to always get the market applause. Just in 2005, another 15 billion reais was blocked from the budget. Some of this revenue will clearly be unblocked but the level of government investment for the year remains low at only 9 billion reais.

Now hypothetical situations are always hard to judge but one question continues to linger in my mind: would José Serra, the PSDB (Social Democratic Party) candidate, who lost in a run-off race against Lula, in 2002, would he have made greater changes to the economy, as president, if he would have been elected?

It is likely that José Serra would have had an easier time handling the demand of the market if he were elected president. The market went up in 2002 every time José Serra made any gains in the polls. Mr. Serra being Cardoso's official presidential choice for the candidacy gave him the proper "market clout" to run for the presidency.

There would have been little need to increase the budget surplus to such high levels or choose a FleetBank president as Brazil's new central bank president. More leeway would have been given to a Serra's administration by almost everyone in the business and financial community.

If one looks at what José Serra fought for when he was in public office he was anything but a proponent of free-market liberalism. He was considered a supporter of the "development" wing of his party, PSDB, disbelieving the rhetoric of the Finance Minister Malan, who was then Finance Minister of Cardoso and other neo-liberal forces in the PSDB.

As the nation's Health Minister under the Cardoso administration, Serra fought for generic medication forcing him to confront pharmaceutical corporations. This program made basic medicines cheaper for the average Brazilian but diminished profits for pharmaceutical companies.

Also, Serra was lauded by some in breaking the patents of HIV retrovirus medicine. The HIV program provides Brazilians infected with the disease with free cocktails, that help them live longer and healthier lives.

José Serra, also during the campaign sometimes attacked the negative economic outcomes of the "Plano Real" the main economic plan created by Cardoso as finance minister during the Itamar Franco administration.

It is also interesting to note that no major political chief - or "cacique" (Indian chief) as they are often called in Brazil - like senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães, former São Paulo mayor Paulo Maluf or ex-president José Sarney supported Serra's bid for the presidency during the election.

Magalhães initially supported Ciro Gomes' candidacy, but after the first round he openly supported Lula against Serra. Actually, José Sarney supported Lula from the first round.

Serra's campaign received, however, support from other reputable senators like Pedro Simon (PMDB) from Rio Grande do Sul. His vice-president was a woman Senator Rita Camata, from the state of Espírito Santo.

Though it is early to talk about the 2006 elections, José Serra, the mayor of São Paulo is a close second to Lula in recent polls and is the only one who would not lose to Lula in the first round if the elections were conducted today.

It is undeniable that Lula's record is amazing as a person. He was a man who never finished high school. He shined shoes and sold peanuts to make a living in São Paulo. He worked his way up the labor union's hierarchy during the military dictatorship. There he learned how to negotiate with others as the leader of a major labor union.

It is undeniable that Lula has made many changes as president to Brazil's economy, especially its foreign policy. But Brazil spent almost a year, in 2003 making painful corrections to its economy, mostly from the pessimistic economic scenarios in 2002.

As 2005 begins, the Brazilian economy and politics faces some uncertainty. The interest rates are extremely high, hurting the possibility of another strong economic growth year.

The political dynamics has been made more complicated with the election of Severino Cavalcanti from the PP (Progressive Party) party as chairman of the House of Deputies.

Lula still has majority support in Congress, but how far are they willing to go to pass major reforms, like political or tax reform is something we shall just have to wait and see.

But sometimes you have to wonder, how would present day Brazil be different if José Serra had been elected to the presidency. Would he have been more able to conduct more changes to this failed interest rate policy?

Could he have handled the tough political calculations that Lula

Daniel Torres is a political science and economics major at the University of Massachusetts. Comments welcome at dftorres@gmail.com.

has been dealing with? These are questions we may never have answers too, but from who he is it is unlikely that he would have followed the footsteps of Cardoso.

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