São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil – Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was returning Thursday to the gritty suburb where he campaigned as a radical leftist for years before winning Brazil’s presidency.
This time, he’s a popular centrist who stabilized Brazil’s economy and brought millions out of poverty.
Silva is virtually assured of victory Sunday, despite repeated allegations of political dirty tricks that forced him to fire his campaign manager and prompted arrest warrants this week for some of his top remaining advisers.
The one-time lathe operator became Brazil’s first elected leftist president four years ago but almost immediately rejected that label, courting bankers, businessmen and other power brokers he once antagonized as a firebrand union leader.
Wrapping up his re-election campaign Thursday, he planned to address thousands of supporters at a rally instead of attending the final candidates’ debate.
With polls showing him comfortably ahead of conservative former São Paulo Gov. Geraldo Alckmin and leftist Sen. Heloisa Helena, Silva seems confident of his hold on the vast center of Latin America’s largest country.
Silva’s metamorphosis began after three failed attempts at becoming president.
As an opposition leader, he struck a tone of Third World defiance, urging Brazil to renege on its foreign debt and branding the International Monetary Fund as the enemy.
But as president, he restrained public spending, beat inflation by keeping interest rates high and generated enough budget surpluses to pay off the entire $15 billion Brazil owed to the fund in a single installment.
He even went after his old comrades in the leftist Workers Party, which he had founded to oppose the 1964-85 military regime.
Half a dozen leftist congressmen were expelled when they objected to his reforms of the chronically bleeding pension system.
In one of his final campaign ads, Silva said he has learned a lot in the past four years: “My errors will show me what to avoid, and my achievements will show me how to do things better.”
He made similar remarks in June when he announced his re-election bid.
