SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil's leftist
president-elect, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, pledged Monday to
quell his nation's financial turmoil and put Latin America's
largest country back on the road to sustained growth.
Following his watershed political victory Sunday to become
the country's first elected left-wing leader, the man known
simply as Lula called on multilateral lenders like the IMF to
stand by Brazil at the same time he promised to fight to reduce
hunger among the country's 50 million poor.
"Yesterday, Brazil voted to change, the electorate decided
on a new path for the country," Lula told hundreds of reporters
in a plush hotel in the financial district of Sao Paulo after
his victory in the election runoff.
"This implies the start of a new historic cycle."
Lula, who created his Workers' Party in 1980, won 61
percent in the runoff, defeating Jose Serra, the candidate of
President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's ruling coalition. It was
Lula's fourth bid for the presidency. He will be sworn in for a
four-year term on Jan. 1, 2003.
Brazilians from the Amazon jungle in the north to the
industrial south celebrated the former metalworker's win as
Lula prepared a government to replace Cardoso, whose eight
years in office have yielded mixed results for the country.
While Cardoso defeated hyperinflation and attracted tens of
billions of dollars in foreign investment, unemployment is at
its highest level since early 2000 and real wages are falling.
While promising his first priority was Brazil's 170 million
people, Lula said he would also address the concerns of
investors, who have been on tenterhooks for months at the
prospect the world's ninth-largest economy is turning left.
"We will face up to the current external vulnerability of
the Brazilian economy, a crucial factor in the financial
turbulence of the last months, in a safe way," Lula said.
The man who once led striking workers against Brazil's
1964-85 military government added he would push for the quick
passage of reforms to Brazil's tax and social security systems
- changes long sought by impatient financial markets.
Markets, including stocks, bonds and the local currency -
which has lost nearly 40 percent of its value against the
dollar this year - were mostly unchanged after Lula's
much-awaited statement following a slightly weaker opening.
Lula also said he hoped multilateral lenders would restore
credit lines to foreign companies, which have seen their access
to capital reduced in recent months amid the market turmoil.
"I think they were encouraging statements. There seem to be
very good intentions, but what I noticed were the lack of
details," said Siobhan Manning, Latin American debt strategist
in New York with the Italian investment bank Caboto.
"Yet no new names for the Central Bank governor," she said.
An adviser to Lula told reporters the president-elect hoped
to name his Cabinet team all at once, lessening the likelihood
Lula would name his much-anticipated finance minister
beforehand.
UNCERTAINTY OVER?
Worries over the economy of the world's fourth-largest
democracy have grown in recent months, not least due to fears
over how Lula will deal with Brazil's $260 billion debt load.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said Monday, "I'm glad
the (election) uncertainty is over and from what I know of
Lula, I think they are going to be OK," he said.
The United States and other wealthy country lenders backed
a record $30 billion International Monetary Fund loan to Brazil
earlier this year intended to see it through the election.
President Bush is expected to call Lula to congratulate
him, and other world leaders have already sent messages. Lula,
who was born to a poor family in Brazil's northeast, received
invitations to visit Germany and France.
The region's left-wingers jumped on his win as a force for
change in Latin America.
In a dig at Bush's description of Iran, Iraq and North
Korea as an "axis of evil," Venezuela's populist president,
Hugo Chavez, said Lula's win represented the coming of a Latin
American "axis of good."
"An axis of evil? More like an axis of good, of the people,
of the future," Chavez said in a radio broadcast Sunday. "A new
impulse of freedom is sweeping the continent again."