Thanks to his life story and the history of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had a rare chance to be the president capable of asking the rich to donate and the poor to wait. His credibility with the poor population gave him the right to ask them to be patient while awaiting the changes. And the strength with which he took office permitted him to call upon the rich to accept the changes.

But the chance was lost. The poor were offered better administration of the old government-assistance programs; the rich, maintenance of their privileges intact. Above all, it was a chance lost by the history of Brazil.

It will be difficult for us to ever again have a more favorable historical moment and a president more qualified to promote a coming together of diverse classes to construct the Nation.

Unfortunately, one factor impeded this from happening. Lula and the Workers Party (PT) never set forth a clear national project. Party and leader organized around a corporativist vision dividing the country into pieces to be attended to separately.

They never perceived that the nation as a whole is a being different from the sum of its parts and that in moments of crisis it is necessary to reorient the national destiny around a transforming project.

That is the difference between the Bolsa-Escola and the Bolsa-Família. The first helps to reorient the national destiny through education; the second helps the families who receive it today.

In the government, Lula and the PT did not perceive that asking some to donate and others to wait would bring gains to all. A better Brazil for everyone would result from transferring resources from "the haves" to invest in the services necessary for "the have-nots." That is one great difference between statism and syndicalism.

It is a shame that Lula and his inner circle did not succeed in viewing Brazil in its totality or in perceiving their role in reorienting the national destiny. They lacked a vision as to where they wanted to lead, and could have led, the country.

They refused to ask for patience from the poor, or for donations from those who are beneficiaries of the fiscal and budgetary policies. Or perhaps they did not discover how to ask.

On the contrary, they asked the lower classes to commemorate the small handout from the government assistance programs and to commemorate with the rich the advantages they retained. This is just the opposite of what was said during the elections.

Beyond this lack of perception of the need to reorient the country's future, the PT and the government were corrupted by the ease of using public relations to manipulate public opinion. And they believed that, in the government, this would work for four years. And then for four more years, until it would elect Lula's successor.

This was bound to fail and various people sounded the warning several times. Some of them were in the government itself but outside the central nucleus. The corruption scandals are part of a game of superficial politics. They are a reflection of the arrogance of the publicist who comes to believe in the truth of his or her own publicity.

To make matters worse, each time problems emerged, caused by the disconnect between reality and image, the PT and the government called upon the advertising expert to fine-tune the image instead of changing the reality of the government's errors and omissions.

Until it was too late. Lula the politician can still continue to be popular, to be reelected, to be very successful until the end of a second term, perpetuating the omission, avoiding change.

What is gone, however, is the leader who could have changed Brazil, the one capable of making the country obey without resorting to authoritarianism, the one who could have reoriented our destiny.

He abandoned the wait and the donation. He preferred staging to transformation, staying on the corner that he inherited instead of, as everyone had hoped, leading us down the road of change.

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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