BRAZIL: Recession No Match for Lula’s Charisma

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 15 2003 (IPS) - The weight of Brazil’s economic recession and high unemployment during the first eight months of the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration has not hurt the president’s popularity.

Nor has it diminished the hopes that the leftist candidate’s electoral victory awakened among the Brazilian people in October 2002.

Lula’s charismatic leadership style to a great extent explains the continued confidence he enjoys, in an economic context that would be disastrous for just about anyone else in his place, say experts.

Brazil’s gross domestic product (GDP) shrank 0.1 percent and 1.6 percent in the first two quarters of 2003, respectively, compared to the previous period, with industry bearing the brunt of the bad news.

The GDP decline was caused by increased interest rates to combat inflation and fiscal belt-tightening, which critics say are policies that go against Lula’s promises for change and aggravate the recessive orientation set by his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003).

Furthermore, the leftist Workers Party (PT), founded by Lula, is accused now of supporting measures that it condemned in the past.

This is the case of the social security reform, awaiting a final vote in the Senate. The issue created deep divisions within the governing party, but Lula’s popularity remains relatively unscathed.

Despite the continued recession, which fuels an unemployment rate of nearly 13 percent, Lula’s public image is "good to excellent" for 45 percent of the Brazilians surveyed in late August by Datafolha, the polling institute of Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

That is three percentage points higher than the previous Datafolha poll, conducted in June.

Just 10 percent of respondents said the president’s performance was "very poor or bad" and 42 percent said it was "average".

Lula is the "typical charismatic leader in the Weberian definition," in reference to German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), says political scientist Alessandra Aldé, of the University Research Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ).

And his charisma was put to good use in the electoral campaign, and now in the government, she says.

It is employed in Lula’s frequent speeches and in official publicity, putting an accent on the direct communication of the president with the people – in practice, "saving" the government, Aldé told IPS.

This was particularly evident in a recent – and long – interview with Brazil’s leading television network, TV Globo, which was heavy on personal and family-related questions and not at all about politics, she pointed out.

Lula’s credibility and his discourse are able to maintain hopes among Brazilians that better times are ahead, said the political scientist.

The president’s popularity also benefits from the "favourable coverage" that the communications media give his administration. The principal official actions, economic policy and social security and tax reform have the backing of conservatives, and therefore, the press, Aldé said.

Coincidentally, in the Datafolha poll, 28 percent of respondents described the Lula government as right-leaning, versus 22 percent who said it is "of the left", and 12 percent who said it is centrist.

It is an image that contradicts his past and the identity of the PT, which was born in the 1980s as a new socialist leftist movement in Brazil, and posed a radical opposition to the successive governments.

But then the party toned down its discourse for last year’s presidential campaign, and formed an alliance with the Liberal Party, which, despite its name, is conservative.

The continued confidence of the electorate in the Lula administration is confirmed in the monthly polls conducted by the Instituto Sensus for the National Transport Confederation, a business group.

In August, Lula’s positive image was 48.3 percent, according to Sensus, a portion surpassed only in January and May. Just 10 percent of respondents gave the president negative ratings, and 38.6 percent "average".

Sensus director Ricardo Guedes told IPS that a unique aspect is that most of the people surveyed are willing to give Lula two and a half years to achieve improved living standards for the population.

"Never before had we seen grace periods of more than 12 months," he said.

Political commentators generally predicted a "honeymoon" of just six months when the president was sworn in on Jan. 1.

Lula’s popularity "does not depend on objective results," as would that of "functional leaders" like former president Cardoso, says political expert Guedes.

The "labour union frankness" of the current president, whose began his public life as a leader of metalworkers, favours his communication with society, in contrast to the "academic frankness" of Cardoso, a sociologist by training, Guedes noted.

Another distinctive feature of the Sensus survey is that even by August, more than seven months into the presidency, 40.3 percent of respondents continued to blame the previous government for high unemployment, while just 9.2 percent pinned responsibility on the Lula administration.

But according to Guedes’s analysis, the ongoing popular support for Lula is due in great part to the PT’s "effective policy flexibility" since the elections, "creating an opening beyond the representation of the working class," which is a minority, to include other majoritarian sectors in a social-democratic movement.

The governing style of Lula and the PT, promoting citizen participation in forums and councils, also helps consolidate his positive image, agree Aldé and Guedes.

"People like to be heard," and they make this clear when they respond to polls, Guedes said.