SAO PAULO, Oct. 31 (UPI) -- Brazil's president is taking his predecessors to task for their alleged lack of commitment to improving the nation while in office, slamming one leader in particular in an ongoing war of words.
During what started out as a seemingly innocuous airport opening on Thursday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva railed into previous presidents saying "many" of them "were cowards and didn't have the courage to do what needed to be done."
He also took the opportunity to refute recent remarks by his opponents that he was something of a demagogue and a populist. Lula's Workers' Party, or PT, is Brazil's first leftist leadership in almost 40 years and has been routinely bashed by lawmakers from the former leading, right-leaning Social Democratic Party.
Lula said in a direct address to those lawmakers opposing him that he assumed the presidency ready "to do the things that needed to be done" and that his widespread agenda of reform has already improved the lives of Brazil's citizenry during his 10 months in office. Since assuming office Lula has promoted proposals to revamp Brazil's social security and tax -- both of which are currently being debated in Congress -- and implemented a nationwide hunger-eradication program dubbed "Zero Fome."
"I want to remind those deputies and governors that lived through the time with me (before Lula's presidency) that they known perfectly what a state of despair the country was in just 10 months ago," said Lula.
"We assumed the government saying: we will first do what is possible, later we will do what is necessary and after that we will do the impossible."
While directed at several past leaders, the president's remarks are also the latest volley in a recent verbal spat between his administration and former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who earlier this week said Lula's governance "lacked creativity."
Cardoso -- currently on a weeks-long visit to Washington -- responded immediately to Lula's comments on past leaders' cowardice saying they were "not well thought out" and that he wasn't going to let the president place the onus for all of Brazil's woes on him.
The former two-term president who left office last January said that Lula still has a long way to go in his fledgling presidential career and that "little by little he will see that it is not that easy" to affect change.
He went to surmise that Lula was exaggerating Brazil's problems to promote his reforms agenda, an accusation many of his opponents has made during his tenure in office, particularly when dealing with the problem of hunger and the inception of the Zero Fome project.
Some say that Lula's administration embellished the numbers on Brazil's malnourished -- an estimated 23 million out of a populace totaling 170 million -- to get the federal funds necessary for its inception. The president has refuted the allegations.
Meanwhile, Lula's chief of staff Jose Dirceu appeared to attempt to stem the tide of ill will between Lula and Cardoso, offering an apology on Thursday for his own recent nasty remarks about the former president. Earlier in the week, Dirceu said that Cardoso had managed to "dismantle" the country during his eight years in office.
Though passing the buck on Brazil's problems to the predecessor is nothing new here, it appears Lula kicked the tradition up a notch this week, perhaps in an effort to stem the tide of recent bad publicity his administration has received.
Scandals involving ministers misappropriating state funds for personal use have led the nation's newspapers in recent weeks. Last month, the Lula administration was forced to ax the head of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform. The decision to fire Marcelo Resende was apparently prompted by the 171 land invasions by Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, or MST, thus far this year, more than all of 2002.
The 19-year-old MST -- one of the largest land reform advocacy groups in the world -- uses land invasions of private, unused tracks to bring attention to their quest for greater equality of land distribution in Brazil. According to a recent survey, some 20 percent of Brazilians own 90 percent of private lands.
The negative attention has caused Lula's popularity to plummet according to a recent poll, dropping several points since the last major census back in August.
The bad press -- coupled with Cardoso's remarks -- appear to have sparked a furor in Lula who until recently had ridden a wave of popularity and relative success. His reforms proposals have cleared the lower house of Congress and are expected to be passed by the end of the year, Zero Fome's has been lauded both and home and abroad for its humanitarian effort.
But as one lawmaker remarked, the president seems to think of himself as Brazil's "messiah" who can cure all the nation's ills.
Lula's angers, however, is a sure sign that the savior of Brazil is beginning to recognize his mortality, and doesn't like what he sees.
