Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

Brazil’s flamboyant President strives to make his country a global player | The Times

He is one of the world’s most popular leaders, rising from rags to riches. He has brought lost respect back to his country and is currently going about the task of forging Middle East peace and resolving the crisis over Iran’s nuclear programme.

Not Barack Obama, the winner of last year’s Nobel Prize, but another pretender to the trophy, Brazil’s flamboyant President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who last week claimed to have achieved an agreement with Tehran to send low-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for fuel rods for a research reactor.

“People say that it was none of Brazil’s business to be an intermediary with Iran,” Mr Lula said, hitting out at criticism of his intervention. “But who said it was a matter for the United States?” That is a slogan Mr Lula would be happy to apply to any international crisis as he attempts to forge his new role as global statesman and mediator in the world’s most intractable troublespots.

Mr Lula’s Iranian deal may have fallen apart within 24 hours with news of an American-brokered sanctions deal. But as the months tick down to the end of his last term, there is no sign of let-up in his attempt to make Brazil a global player — or to challenge the established order of Western supremacy.

In the official group photo for the G20 meeting in September, Mr Lula was on Obama’s right hand, with Chinese President Hu Jintao on his left. In the row behind was Gordon Brown. A symbolic line-up of the new world order — at least as Mr Lula would like to see it.

“My man, love this guy,” President Obama gushed, clasping Mr Lula by the hand at the earlier G20 summit in London. “The most popular politician on Earth.”

And he may well be. Eight years after coming to power, Mr Lula still enjoys a 76 per cent approval rating — Brazil’s most popular President yet.

Upper-class Brazilians may sneer at his rough Portuguese and brusque manners. Poor Brazilians adore him: his Government’s Bolsa Família — or income support fund — has helped take 30 million out of poverty. After years of steady financial management and economic growth, 50 per cent of Brazilians are now middle class.

Brazil’s self confidence reached a high point in September, when Mr Lula’s impassioned, off-the-cuff speech helped clinch the 2016 Olympics for Rio de Janeiro. It hasn’t dipped since. Now Mr Lula is leading the drive to win Brazil a place on the UN Security Council — all before his term expires in October.

Whether Brazil’s new fortunes can outlive Mr Lula remains to be seen. Many put its successes down to the President’s personal charm. “He’s at ease meeting people, he’s been doing it all his life, and that’s what makes him such a good negotiator,” says one journalist who has met the leader a number of times. “He tells you what you want to hear.”

Not everybody, perhaps. On Gordon Brown’s visit to Brazil last year, Mr Lula took aim at his economic record, declaring: “The crisis was caused by the irrational behaviour of white folks with blue eyes.” It was a comment reminscent of the other big Latin American player, Hugo Chávez, whose friendship is one of the darker spots on Mr Lula’s international reputation.

Mr Lula is happy to offend when the targets are members of the traditional power structures he seeks to dismantle. He is less sanguine, though, when the barbs are aimed at him.

In 2004, when the New York Times correspondent Larry Rohter wrote about concern over his drinking habits, Mr Lula tried to have him expelled. In 2009 he was lambasted for supporting the former President José Sarney through a blizzard of devastating corruption allegations to hold on to his support for his coalition government. “In Brazil, Christ would have to ally himself with Judas,” Mr Lula said afterwards.

Mara Gabrilli, an opposition politician who has had dealings with Mr Lula, said: “He is a very charismatic person, but with me he was not trustworthy. He is on honeymoon with himself.”