What a long, strange, trip for Lula
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ran for president in Brazil, he took great delight in railing against the Washington Consensus, the IMF, and the United States more generally. Since he’s won, however, he’s pursued a somewhat different course. How different? Raymond Colitt has a story in the Financial Times that highlights the gulf between ...
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ran for president in Brazil, he took great delight in railing against the Washington Consensus, the IMF, and the United States more generally. Since he's won, however, he's pursued a somewhat different course. How different? Raymond Colitt has a story in the Financial Times that highlights the gulf between Lula then and Lula now:
When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ran for president in Brazil, he took great delight in railing against the Washington Consensus, the IMF, and the United States more generally. Since he’s won, however, he’s pursued a somewhat different course. How different? Raymond Colitt has a story in the Financial Times that highlights the gulf between Lula then and Lula now:
For all his charisma, even Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who came to power as the idol of Latin America’s Left, found it hard to sell his orthodox economic policy at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, on Thursday. His audience of 10,000 anti-globalisation activists was already miffed at the Brazilian president’s decision to attend the World Economic Forum on Friday to meet the bigwigs of capitalism they so despise. But having to defend two years of textbook economic orthodoxy and cosy relations with the International Monetary Fund was too much for disenchanted supporters at an event launched as a challenge to Davos, Switzerland, five years ago. As a former union leader who in the late 1970s took on big business and a military dictatorship, Mr Lula da Silva was quick to snap back at his hecklers. “That noise comes from those . . . who don’t have patience to hear the truth,” he retorted, in reference to spontaneous jeering.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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