How the crisis our country is currently experiencing will end, no one can yet predict. One thing is very probable, however: twenty or thirty years hence, when the historians analyze what is happening today in Brazil, they will certainly maintain that the present generation of leaders did not rise to the occasion.

The 722 national leaders elected in 2002 - federal deputies, senators, governors and the President of the Republic - are not succeeding in untying the knots left us by Brazilian history.

Since the impeachment of President Collor in the early 1990s, the present generation has shown a great predisposition for - even competence in - identifying and removing corrupt politicians. This can be attributed in large part to the press. Even so, the knot of corruption has not been confronted correctly.

Identifying, removing and even arresting corrupt politicians is one thing. It is something else entirely to create a national political system immunized against corruption, a national culture, a legal landmark that impedes society in general and the politicians in particular, from becoming corrupt. And impedes theft or diversion of public resources by those who, by chance, remain corrupt and do not correct their behavior.

Brazil has still not taken any concrete measure whatsoever to untie the knots of social exclusion, of poverty, of income concentration affecting half of the population. The Brazilian elites demonstrate a tremendous lack of will to take the measures necessary to untie these knots.

In addition to the lack of will, stemming from class interests, there is still-verifiable, enormous political incompetence in setting up the social engineering that would transform Brazil from a perverse society with income concentration dating from the beginning of our history, to a more just, inclusive one.

We are also failing to untie the knot of economic growth, the increase of wealth. Some decades ago Brazil entered into a process of recession, or of slow growth, that is tying us down. And we still have not discovered how to untie the knot of growth with monetary stability.

Even graver is the fact that the present generation of national leaders is commemorating a growth rate that is one of the lowest in the world today. It is as if we were commemorating the fact we are running, all the while knowing that those at the front are running faster. The rates of economic growth in the last decades, although positive, are leaving our country ever further behind.

In the same manner, the present generation of Brazilian leaders is commemorating advances in education that are ridiculously timid when compared with the performance of other countries.

Brazil, which in the 1970s was one of the most promising - perhaps the most promising - countries in the Third World, is today, from the educational point of view, far behind in relation to several countries that were worst off thirty years ago. We are not even succeeding in untying the knots of adult illiteracy and childhood education.

Nor have we up to now succeeded in untying the knot of urban violence. Our cities are exploding before our eyes, and we, the 722 national leaders elected in 2002, have failed in demonstrating the will and competency to confront that problem.

The present generation is not succeeding in freeing itself from the knots left by previous generations. If past generations did not rise to the occasion in which they were living, today it appears that we are not rising to the challenges that the future of Brazil demands of us. We do not know how to untie the knots of our history.

Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). You can visit his homepage - www.cristovam.com.br - and write to him at cristovam@senador.gov.br.

Translated from the Portuguese by Linda Jerome - LinJerome@cs.com.

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