BRAZIL: Elected as the ethical exception to the corruption and cronyism of Brazilian politics, President Lula is now accused of dirty dealings, writes Tom Hennigan in São Paulo
At first glance, Brazil's upcoming presidential election looks little more than a rehash of the one held four years ago.
The clear frontrunner and the man everyone expects to win is once again, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the charismatic former metal worker and union boss who in October 2002 triumphed in a landslide to become Brazil's first left-wing president.
Four years on and Lula is running hard on his record of sound, if unspectacular, stewardship of South America's largest economy and the success of a series of social policies which have seen a modest redistribution of Brazil's wealth to its poorest citizens.
For pollsters, the only question really left open is whether he will improve on his 2002 showing and win outright in the first round to be held on October 1st, or be forced to into a run-off round with his nearest challenger three weeks later.
Helping the president's cause has been the uninspiring campaign of Geraldo Alckmin, the candidate of the main opposition alliance. The former governor of São Paulo state is a stiff career politician in a country that warms to the back-slapping Lula and his folksy football analogies.
But whereas Lula was elected in 2002 amid a national mood of hope for change that found an outlet in his "Peace and Love" campaign, four years later it is a far more cynical electorate that will go to the polls.
The most obvious explanation for the sour mood is political corruption. In 2002 Lula and his Workers Party were seen as an ethical exception to the corruption and cronyism of the country's political class.
Four years on and it is Lula who finds himself dogged by accusations of dirty dealings as his campaign enters its final stretch. Last week he had to sack his campaign manager after police arrested members of his staff in the process of orchestrating a smear operation against leading opposition candidates, including Mr Alckmin.
This follows last year's shock revelations that the president's closest political confidants used public money to buy support in the country's congress, setting off one of the worst corruption scandals in Brazil since the return of democracy in 1985.
Many among the middle-class who voted for Lula in 2002 as the ethical choice say they will not do so again, and there has been a growing grassroots campaign calling on Brazilians, who are legally obliged to vote, to annul their ballot in protest at the entire political system.
And while corruption has alienated many middle-class voters, then discontent with Lula's economic policy has caused many traditional left-wing voters drift away.
In 2002, the prospect of Lula winning was enough to send a shudder through global financial markets. Candidate Lula was an unknown quantity with a fiery radical past and each poll showing him heading for victory battered the country's currency, eventually forcing the International Monetary Fund into a record $30 billion bailout package.
But in the intervening four years Wall Street has fallen in love with President Lula, won over by his commitment to pay down the country's enormous debt and his hawkish stand against inflation, which he holds in check with the world's highest real interest rates.
Today, markets are serenely indifferent to the prospect of him being re-elected, a fact that riles many former left-wing supporters who did not expect him to enforce the neo- liberal policies of his predecessor.
The most vocal critic of this economic direction is Heloísa Helena, a senator from the northeastern state of Alagoas who was expelled from the Workers Party for her opposition to Lula's policies. She is the presidential candidate of the Socialism and Liberty Party, founded in 2004 by Workers Party dissidents, and hovers in third place, with 10 per cent in the polls.
But while Lula has seen many of those who voted for him in 2002 drift away disgusted or disillusioned, he has also seen his social policies win him over many new supporters.
"In 2002 Lula was elected with similar levels of support across income groups," says Márcia Cavallari, executive director at IBOPE, Brazil's leading opinion polling company. "Now his strongest support is coming from people with less education and less income."
Lula has shown an almost obsessive devotion to the wallet of Brazil's poorest. His tough stand on inflation is, he says, the result of having seen the benefits of pay hikes for workers wiped out by spiralling price rises during his days as a union negotiator.
He has authorised steep rises in the minimum wage and for those without formal employment, he has created his Bolsa Família (Family Purse) programme. Under this, the poorest receive social assistance so long as parents vaccinate their children and make them attend school.
The programme is expected to reach more than 11 million families by the end of the year. Polls show it has created an enormous pool of support for Lula among recipients, especially in the country's poor northeast whose poorest citizens were traditionally lined up to vote for reactionary local caudillos.
Bolsa Família is so politically successful that the opposition has been reduced to claiming credit for its genesis and promising to expand the programme, having initially dismissed it as little more than vote-buying.
Now the most trenchant criticism of Bolsa Família comes from former colleagues of the president.
"Clearly it helps the situation of people," says Hélio Bicudo, a leading Workers Party intellectual who left the party last year disillusioned at the direction under Lula, "but it is not part of an enlightened policy of developing the country because nothing is being done to develop education or health."
The fear now among many policy analysts is that despite the political base provided by Bolsa Família, Lula looks unwilling to make the difficult structural changes Brazil needs in areas such as education, health, security and pensions, without which Bolsa Família will prove little more than a palliative.
"Lula is walking on air in a political vacuum," says Norman Gall, executive director of São Paulo's Fernand Braudel Institute.
"He doesn't have any ideology. He just wants to be president for another four years, but in all of his speeches he does not say why. He doesn't really have any clear idea of where the country should be going. It is just him."