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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/22/lula-brazil-ex-president-prison-interview/">https://theintercept.com/2019/05/22/lula-brazil-ex-president-prison-interview/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Interview with Brazil’s Ex-President
Lula From Prison, Discussing Global Threats, Neoliberalism,
Bolsonaro, and More</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Glenn Greenwald - May 22,
2019</div>
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<h3>Read the full interview:</h3>
<p><b>Glenn Greenwald: Good morning, Mr. President. It’s
good to see you again, and thank you for the
interview. This interview is for a Brazilian audience
as well as for an international audience. Everyone
outside Brazil already knows that you’ve been unjustly
sentenced, a point we’ll get back to in a moment. But
many people have also been asking me how you’ve been
treated in prison, and you’ve said many times that the
authorities here are humane and professional. Is this
still the case?</b></p>
<p>Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: I don’t know what
humanitarian treatment in a prison means. I’m locked up,
and I’m in solitary confinement — and it really is
solitary, because most of the time I’m completely alone.
I meet with my lawyers, and that’s it. And with my
family once a week. I don’t know whether to consider
this decent. What allows me to endure all of this
without loathing it, and with a brighter outlook, is
knowing that there are millions and millions of
Brazilians living in freedom who, even so, are in worse
conditions than I am. At least I have the opportunity to
have lunch, to have dinner, you know?</p>
<p><b>But Brazil is the country you ran for eight years,
and there are plenty of people in jail. How do you
compare your treatment here to the treatment common
prisoners receive in common prisons?</b></p>
<p>Take the Brazilians who have to live in stilt houses
above swamps: They’re living as second-class citizens. A
citizen who has to live in a single 9-square-meter room,
who has to have lunch, dinner, has to cook, make love,
go to the bathroom, and do everything within those 9
square meters — they’re not living any better than I am
here. That’s why I’m less concerned about my own
situation and more concerned with that of millions of
people …</p>
<p><b>I get it, but are you being abused or tortured?
That’s what people want to know.</b></p>
<p>No, listen: We’ve been fighting for many years to end
torture. These days, torture has more sophisticated
forms. It’s based on plea bargaining, on the thousands
of lies told simultaneously over and over, and people
imprisoned for two or three years until they say what
the prosecutor or police commissioner wants to hear. I
could cite the example of [Antonio] Palocci’s plea
bargain, where he’s lying in the most unbelievable
manner. Or take Leo [Pinheiro], for example, who’s in
prison and lying through his teeth to get out. The
secret is to talk about Lula. This has been going on for
five years. You know that I’m here even though neither
the judge, the prosecutor, or the Federal Police
commissioner who launched the investigation have any
proof against me. They know that the apartment isn’t
mine, they know that the ranch isn’t mine, but they keep
up these lies …</p>
<p><b>So are they mistreating people in order to elicit
accusations against others?</b></p>
<p>Yes, and it continues to this day. I joke with my
lawyers that I’d like to plea bargain and denounce
Sérgio Moro, denounce the TRF4 [the 4th Regional Federal
Court], to be a whistleblower against the commissioner
that launched that deceitful investigation, I’d like to
denounce [Deltan] Dallagnol. I’d love to, you know, but
nobody would accept my plea bargain. Let’s see if you
arrange for my whistleblowing to see the light of day,
Glenn, because I need to make something clear. There’s
this phrase by an English philosopher, that the curse of
the first lie you tell is that you spend the rest of
your life telling more lies to justify the first one. Do
you remember when I went for my first deposition with
Moro? I said to his face, “You’re condemned to condemn
me,” given the huge amount of lies they’ve told, you
know, in this agreement between Operation Car Wash and
the <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/10/29/lava-jato-imprensa-entrevista-assessora/">Brazilian
press</a>. Because Operation Car Wash would be nothing
without press coverage. But it’s a collusion between
media, television, radio, and newspapers, where the
press editors get the material before even the lawyers
do. Before the defense lawyers received any news, the
press already had. Thanks to this collusion, you’ve
woven a gigantic lie. Every day, every hour I keep
wondering, will GloboNews ever use the Jornal Nacional
to say, “We made a mistake with Lula’s case”?</p>
<p><b>In the </b><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2016/04/11/assista-entrevista-exclusiva-com-ex-presidente-lula/"><b>interview</b></a><b>
that we did in 2016</b><b>, you harshly criticized
Operation Car Wash, insisting that it was selective
and an operation dedicated to destroying PT — as you
said just now. But Operation Car Wash went on to
imprison Eduardo Cunha, who led the </b><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2019/04/21/autoritarismo-do-stf-e-da-lava-jato-nasceu-no-impeachment-tabajara-de-dilma/"><b>impeachment
process against Dilma</b></a><b>, and also Michel
Temer, who became president after Dilma’s impeachment
(though he’s been released, he then went back, was
released again, but at least he’s on trial), and also
Sérgio Cabral, the governor of the state of Rio de
Janeiro. And now they’re aggressively going after
Aécio Neves, Dilma’s center-right opponent in 2014.
After all this, can you really say that Operation Car
Wash was launched to destroy PT?</b></p>
<p>Glenn, let me tell you something: Operation Car Wash
has been selective most of the time it’s been running.
You’re a foreign journalist, so you can investigate
impartially. Check out who made donations to PSDB [the
Brazilian Social Democracy Party], and who made
donations to PT. How much did PSDB receive, and how much
did PT receive? And what about other parties? Conduct a
thorough study, an impartial one, and figure out why
only [João] Vaccari of PT was sentenced for campaign
finances. What about the other treasurers from the other
parties??</p>
<p><b>But isn’t Aécio on trial?</b></p>
<p>But Aécio isn’t a campaign treasurer. I’m talking about
campaign finances to show you that there’s been a focus
on going after PT from the outset. Why? Because they
needed to take out PT from the government, and since
they didn’t manage to do so over the course of nearly
four elections, they needed to create clear ways to stir
up hatred of PT. Historically in Brazil, and I think the
whole world over, this kind of loathing increases once
you accuse someone of corruption.</p>
<p>Listen, let me be crystal clear: I think if someone
steals, they should go to jail, whether they’re PT or
not, whether they’re Catholic or evangelical, you know?
You steal, you go to jail. If the sentence has been
pronounced, if the facts have been established, and if
it’s been proven that you stole, you must go to jail.
This is the kind of lawful state we want to establish.
Now, I want to challenge the people who imprisioned me
to show the world a single shred of evidence against me.
I’m not asking for anything else.</p>
<p><b>But do you agree that Operation Car Wash is going
after other politicians, including your opponents from
the center-right?</b></p>
<p>Glenn, Operation Car Wash has been gradually changing
into a political operation that benefits whoever
participates in it. I’ll give you a tip-off here, a bit
of whistleblowing that you can help investigate: Not
long ago, we found out that there was an agreement made
by the U.S. Department of Justice with what Dallagnol
was handling for the Federal Public Ministry, for
Operation Car Wash, to the tune of $600 million.</p>
<p><b>From the U.S.?</b></p>
<p>From the U.S. And afterwards, it surfaced that Sérgio
Moro had authorized another agreement to the tune of
$1.6 billion from Odebrecht, here in Brazil. We also
know that there are other monetary agreements funding
Operation Car Wash, but right now we don’t have access
to the figures. In fact, PT is demanding that the leader
of the House of Representatives get the Federal Savings
Bank involved to help us find out who’s made agreements
with Operation Car Wash. Because in fact, any time
someone makes an agreement like this involving hundreds
of millions of dollars, they’re trying to build a
political machine, they’re setting up a racket..</p>
<blockquote data-shortcode-type="pullquote"
data-pull="right"><span> Because in fact, any time
someone makes an agreement like this involving
hundreds of millions of dollars, they’re trying to
build a political machine, they’re setting up a
racket. </span><span></span></blockquote>
<p><b>All right, well, I promise you that we’re working on
these issues, and investigating these …</b></p>
<p><span>Just let me finish, Glenn, I don’t want to stop
in the middle of saying …</span></p>
<p><b>Go ahead.</b></p>
<p><span>The only thing I really want, the only thing, is
that my case be judged objectively. I don’t want
anything else. I want the judges at some point to care
about having hard evidence, either from the side of
the prosecution or from the defendants. Did you know I
had 73 witnesses but that Dallagnol didn’t even show
up to the hearings? He made up that deceitful
PowerPoint presentation and then vanished. The only
person he talks to is Miriam Leitão from Rede Globo
news, and once in a while, he grants an interview.
He’s probably going around now on lecture tours to
make money. Anyway, I don’t want his beliefs to be the
last word. I want evidence to be the last word. If he
can prove that I own what he says I own, that
shouldn’t cost him anything. In the meantime, I’ve
been completely demoralized in the face of public
opinion.</span></p>
<p><b>We won’t be able to settle this right now. You’ve
got your accusations, but it’s a question of evidence
…</b></p>
<p><span>Listen: When PT denounced the foundation that was
set up with these funds, Dallagnol went to Caixa
Economica [federal bank] to try sign a document and
take over the foundation. Let’s put it this way: I’m
being convicted without any foundation, without any
dollars behind me, without any funds, and he’s walking
free, trying to seize $2.5 billion. We denounced him
to the National Justice Council. But who’s going to
judge the case? The Council, which consists of, you
know who? 8 members of the Federal Public Ministry. So
what do you think the result will be? Is there any
doubt?</span></p>
<p><b>During the 2018 elections, we spent a year trying to
get an interview with you, like other journalists, but
nobody was authorized to interview you, even though
some of the most violent people behind bars in the
country, including Nem, the head drug trafficker in
Rio de Janeiro, were interviewed in prison. But now
that the elections are over and Bolsonaro has won, all
of a sudden the courts are allowing some journalists,
like Folha de São Paulo, El País, and Kennedy Alencar
for the BBC to interview you. How would you explain
this?</b></p>
<p><span>I have no doubt, Glenn, that everything that’s
happened in connection with Operation Car Wash has
been to prevent Lula from running for president.
Nowadays I’m certain of this, the same way that I’m
certain that the U.S. Department of Justice is behind
this, and the same way that I’m certain …</span></p>
<p><b>Is there evidence of that?</b></p>
<p><span>Sorry?</span></p>
<p><b>Is there evidence? Is there proof?</b></p>
<p><span>I can only have strong beliefs, you know, about
everything. The same way that I’m absolutely certain
that it’s interest in the petroleum resources of
Brazil’s pre-salt layer that’s behind everything
that’s happened to me and Dilma. Namely, the coup
against Dilma, my imprisonment, the accusations. You
see, Operation Car Wash could have had an important
role in punishing the businessmen — if they’re guilty
— and allowing the businesses to keep on creating
jobs, paying salaries. They could have kept Petrobras
from going broke, from being sold, from being divvied
up as it is. Anyway, I’m very glad that today they’ve
allowed this interview, and I’m grateful to you all
for </span><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/04/05/habeas-corpus-de-lula-foi-decidido-em-um-contexto-de-sombras-no-brasil/"><span>demanding
this in the courts</span></a><span>. I should have
been allowed to have interviews before the elections.</span></p>
<p><b>Well, we requested the interview a long time ago,
before the elections.</b></p>
<p><span>I know. And I’m grateful that you requested one.
But it was denied. First, </span><span>Minister of
the Supreme Court [Ricardo] Lewandowski</span><a
href="https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2019/04/25/politica/1556213831_926319.html"><span>
allowed it</span></a><span>, but then it </span><span>was</span><a
href="https://oglobo.globo.com/brasil/toffoli-veta-entrevista-de-lula-pela-segunda-vez-apos-nova-decisao-de-lewandowski-23125023"><span>
vetoed by [Dias] Toffoli</span></a><span>, I think,</span><span>
as president of the Supreme Court. I knew that it was
a game they were playing, and that the game was: Let’s
prevent Lula from competing in the elections. Why?
Because the worst nightmare of the Brazilian elite is
Lula returning to the presidency. But why exactly, if
they made so much money during my presidency?</span></p>
<p><b>Yes, and isn’t it true, for example, that bank
profits went through the roof during your presidency?</b></p>
<p><span>I don’t know if they went through the roof, but
they grew significantly.</span></p>
<p><b>They did, didn’t they?</b></p>
<p><span>But the truth is that the poor ascended a whole
rung on the economic ladder. And as the lower classes
began to go to university, to go out to the theater,
to go out to eat at restaurants, to travel more by
airplane, this began to bother part of the elite.</span></p>
<p><b>But the upper classes also saw great improvements
during your presidency. So why would this upper class,
who profited so much while you were president, be so
against your return to office?</b></p>
<p><span>It’s because this isn’t just an economic
question; it’s a cultural issue. One has to remember
that it was only a little over a hundred years ago
that slavery was legally abolished, and that it
continues in the minds of many. That’s why the
greatest victims of police violence are black, that’s
why those who are black earn 50 percent less than
those who are white, and that’s why black women earn
less than white women. That’s why those who are black
have a lower average level of schooling than those who
are white. Why? Because slavery is still prevalent
deep within people’s consciousness. It’s a harsh thing
to say, but it’s true. And this doesn’t change
overnight. If we think about civil rights in the U.S.,
things began to change in the 1960s, but how many
people had to die, including Martin Luther King Jr.,
in order to guarantee that black people would be
treated with dignity? Really, I think deep down, it’s
not an economic question. It’s set of a cultural,
political, and sociological issues. </span></p>
<p><b>Well, let’s talk about some cultural issues. Your
government was responsible, for example, for approving
the changes in drug laws in 2006, which were a great
advance in differentiating between drug users and drug
traffickers. But as a result of these laws, the number
of incarcerations rose, specifically of black people
and of women. Looking back, how would you judge the
policies of your government, given that it led to
increase incarcerations during your presidency and
Dilma’s too?</b></p>
<p><span>Let me tell you something. Between 2003 and 2014,
we rolled out a range of strategies and approved as
many laws as possible to improve the system of
policing in this country, to reduce the rate of
corruption, and to put more criminals behind bars. If
you look at anything that’s functioning well in the
Ministry of Justice, you’ll realize that these
advances were put in place specifically during PT’s
government. Exactly then. Now listen, we didn’t manage
to solve the problems of public safety in Brazil, but
we did create the mechanisms, including more civil
ones, for the police to act more professionally, and
we equipped the Federal Police, we set up the National
Police, all with the objective of getting things done.
And all of this is going down the drain now. I
remember when Minister of Justice Tarso Genro approved
PRONASCI, the National Program for Public Safety,
which was a great initative for reducing crime and
helping out young adults. It no longer exists. I think
what’s really needed is a series of public policies to
help resolve the overall situation. What are two
extremely important components?</span></p>
<p><span> First, take PAC, the Growth Acceleration
Program. You mentioned Nem earlier, and I remember </span><a
href="https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2018/03/13/politica/1520947959_760179.html"><span>in
one of his interviews with a magazine</span></a><span>,
I think it was Istoé, he said that the president who
got the most criminals off the streets was Lula,
because during PAC, they lost 20 percent of their
crooks who instead went to go work in PAC programs. In
other words, if you want to reduce violence, you
shouldn’t hand out weapons; you should hand out
education, jobs, salaries, opportunities, and hope.</span></p>
<p><b>But did this actually work during your presidency?
Because for many people, the problem was that violence
and crime increased during the PT government. These
problems were exactly what Bolsonaro exploited in his
rhetoric. Isn’t it true that the problems of …</b></p>
<p><span>It did not increase during the PT government.
During the PT government, we enacted the greatest
policies of social mobility in 500 years of Brazilian
history.</span></p>
<p><b>But did crime increase or decrease?</b></p>
<p><span>It decreased, definitely. It decreased. And
there’s something one has to take into account when
discussing this in the context of Brazil. One thing is
being serious and keeping records of every case that
happens, and another thing is just making the crime
rate look lower by hiding the crimes. What we
emphasized was greater transparency, with the goal of
avoiding the same old trend of poor people being the
victims. When you can guarantee that a young person
will have a job, you know, then he won’t have to steal
someone’s cellphone or tennis shoes. He won’t have to
kill someone to steal their jacket. This is a
no-brainer. When you give a young person the
opportunity to dream, to dream “I can have a job, I
can go to a technical school, I can go to university,”
then this young person will grab and hold on to such
opportunities..</span></p>
<p><b>I see what you mean.</b></p>
<p><span>What kinds of dreams do they have today?</span></p>
<p><b>I’d like to turn to discussing the political
situation here in Brazil and its relation to
international politics, because the whole world is
interested in understanding Brazil after Bolsonaro
took power. In 2015 in the U.S., it was unthinkable
that Trump would win the elections, and nobody
believed it would happen, but he’s now president. The
same thing in the U.K. with Brexit. The same thing in
Europe with nationalist and far-right parties. A year
ago in Brazil, nobody believed that Bolsonaro would be
elected. It was unthinkable, but he won. Now I know
that you believe that Bolsonaro’s victory was due to
causes and factors unique to Brazil, like the media’s
attack on PT, but right now, can we see Bolsonaro’s
victory as part of a larger global pattern in the
democratic world of far-right parties overturning
center-left parties?</b></p>
<p><span>Well, as part of the democratic process in the
whole word, shifts and alternations in power are a
normal pattern. This holds in the U.S., it holds in
Germany, and it holds in Brazil. In one election, the
right wins, in the next one the left wins, and in the
next one …</span></p>
<p><b>But the right-wing is gaining ground in many
countries.</b></p>
<p><span>Now, look: We had a very extraordinary period in
Latin America. The period with the most growth, the
greatest distribution of wealth, and of the most
social inclusion in Latin America happened between
2000 and 2014 with the elections of [Cristina]
Kirchner, [Ricardo] Lagos, Lula, Evo Morales, [Hugo]
Chavez, Rafael Correa — it was a golden age for Latin
America. We’re now in a far-right phase that’s failing
in absurd ways. Macri is a disaster for Argentina, and
he was supposed to be the answer. There’s this book …</span></p>
<p><b>Why is this happening?</b></p>
<p><span>Well, there’s this book by the Mozambican writer
Mia Couto, with the following phrase: “In times of
terror, we choose monsters to protect us.” Now, </span><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/04/11/prisao-lula-odio-golpes/"><span>when
you create hatred within a society</span></a><span>,
when you create anti-political sentiment, when you
take away any kind of hope in people or in existing
institutions, then, well, anything goes. I know that
Americans thought Trump had no chance. So why did he
end up winning the elections? It wasn’t with Putin’s
help, as everyone’s saying. It was because of the lies
of fake news, just like here in Brazil.</span></p>
<p><b>Was that the only reason?</b></p>
<p><span>That’s not the only reason, it was because of
unemployment, because of despair, and because of this
discourse of the shrinking the government, which is
always a concern in the air. You know what I mean?
When Reagan and Thatcher created so-called
globalization, the fad in the 1980s was to say that
being modern was being globalized, and opening the
economy up to the whole world and letting capital
transit freely — even though people could not freely
transit. Now that globalization has caused problems
for developed countries, above all for the U.S., Trump
found an easy line of discourse: “The U.S. is for
Americans, and jobs are for Americans.”</span></p>
<p><b>Well, it’s not very well known that many people who
voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012 then went on to vote
for Trump in 2016. In Brazil, the same thing happened:
Many people who voted for you and then for Dilma went
on to vote for Bolsonaro. How do you explain this?</b></p>
<p><span>Glenn, let me share something with you: I know
Hillary Clinton pretty well. It would have been very
easy to find someone more popular than her. She’s not
an appealing personality. Trump’s victory was due to
him having the right kind of discourse for the white
blue-collar workers, you know, from the automobile
industry, who were unemployed. He promised the
obvious: more jobs for Americans. He promised to fight
the Chinese to create more jobs, and this won him the
elections. Now it’s obviously possible that many
people who voted for Obama voted for Trump, just like
many people who voted for Lula voted for Bolsonaro,
especially since Lula wasn’t running for office. If
Obama was running, I don’t know if Trump would have
won. Concretely, I don’t know if, even in spite of the
extraordinary performance by [Fernando] Haddad — if I
were to have run, would the people have voted, would
PT voters have elected Bolsonaro? Concretely …</span></p>
<p><b>I know people who voted for you, and then for Dilma,
and then for Bolsonaro.</b></p>
<p><span>Well, maybe if I’d been a candidate, these people
wouldn’t have voted for Bolsonaro. Glenn, since you’re
a journalist, you know what’s happened in Brazil.
First of all, Brazil has always had politics based on
a monolithic “conventional wisdom.” Fernando Henrique
Cardoso had eight years of conventional wisdown that
was favorable to him, I had eight years of
conventional wisdom that was against me, and Dilma had
favorable conventional wisdom when the press tried to
create a rift between Dilma and Lula, but then that
didn’t work out, so they were against her. And as soon
as the idea of impeachment came about, they were 100
percent against her.</span></p>
<p><span>There was this climate of hatred running
throughout society, trying to blame PT for all of the
misfortunes of Brazil, but when the elections were on
the horizon, there wasn’t a single viable right-wing
candidate. (I mean, normal right-wing, because as for
Bolsonaro, he’s comparable to Nero standing by while
Rome burned down to the ground.) And in fact,
Bolsonaro’s been in office for five months and we’ve
never heard the words “growth,” “development,”
“investment,” “job creation,” “distribution of wealth”
— these words have simply vanished from the
dictionary. The only thing you see is everyone making
this gun gesture with their fingers all the time, and
this is actually the same shape they used before to
make an “L” for Lula. I guess Bolsonaro borrowed this
gesture from when it was used in my presidential
campaigns. The point is, our country is abandoned,
everyone only speaks of budget cuts and welfare
reform, and promising the society … </span></p>
<p><b>Abandoned by who? I mean, during your interview with
El País, you chalked up the rise of the global right
to the failures of neoliberalism. I’d like to know
more about this issue of neoliberalism failing here in
Brazil and internationally as well. What’s the
relation between the population suffering and their
sudden embrace of far-right leaders like Bolsonaro and
others throughout the democratic world?</b></p>
<p><span>Neoliberalism, as it arose during the era of
globalization, is losing ground everywhere. It’s not
just losing ground to the left, but also to the right,
as it lost to Hitler and to Mussolini. At the same
time, we’ve had two recent examples, in Spain and
Portugal, of the left coming back during the
elections. And even in Germany, where Angela Merkel is
a very strong politician, if she hadn’t formed
coalitions with the Social Democrats, she wouldn’t be
in power.</span></p>
<p><b>But even there, the far-right is growing.</b></p>
<p><span>I know, it’s growing the whole world over, and I
think it’s a warning call for the left, yes. But the
right-wing won’t … you can be sure that after
Bolsonaro and Macri, Cristina [Fernández de Kirchner]
will win the next elections. You can be certain that
if Evo Morales runs for president, he’ll win in
Bolivia, and that the same will happen in many
countries.</span></p>
<p><span>I hope that Americans will have the good sense to
prevent another term of Trump as president, because
he’s not just a problem for the U.S., he’s a problem
for the whole world. He has to learn that given the
importance of the U.S. on the international stage, he
can’t make impulsive decisions without reflecting on
their global consequences. He can’t threaten to wage
war on everyone, threatening to attack all the time.
Enough is enough! We’ve had enough lies, like in
Vietnam, like the lies about Iraq, like the lies about
Libya.</span></p>
<p><span>It’s time to stop this, you know, the world needs
peace, the world needs schools, the world needs more
books, and not more weapons, the world needs jobs.
Sometimes I get really upset thinking about the G20
meeting we had in London, the first one that Obama
went to, where we reached important decisions to deal
with the 2008 financial crisis, and one of the
suggestions was that richer nations, in accord with
the reduction in their internal consumption, could
enable financial means for poorer countries to develop
and to modernize, to buy newer machines, to have
greater access to technology and science. But this
didn’t happen, and protectionism is back.</span></p>
<p><b>But Mr. President, it’s a common criticism, for PT
as well, that while you and Dilma have a reputation
and a political past as left-wing, your form of
government was neoliberal, and there are a number of
examples which we’ve already discussed, </b><b>like
the</b><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/09/27/mercado-lula-sistema-financeiro-pt/"><b>
increase in bank profits</b></a><b> during your
presidency</b><b>. The same way that the Democratic
Party in the U.S. is financed by Wall Street and
Silicon Valley, PT was financed by the richest
corporations in Brazil, such as </b><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/04/18/fhc-e-lula-dois-investimentos-certeiros-da-odebrecht/"><b>Odebrecht</b></a><b>,
OAS, JBS, and lots of banks. You implemented a welfare
reform in 2004, and Dilma implemented austerity in
2014 and went ahead with the hydroelectric dam in Belo
Monte that environmental and indigenous activists were
against, and you implemented tax cuts for the rich. If
you think that Bolsonaro’s victory was due to the
failures caused by neoliberalism, don’t you think that
PT built it up?</b></p>
<p><span>Oh, no, no. No, Glenn, I won’t answer your
question before responding to all of these things
you’ve just said about PT and my government.</span></p>
<p><b>I don’t want you to respond to those …</b></p>
<p><span>It’s important to keep in mind that …</span></p>
<p><b>It’s a common criticism, that’s why I’m asking.</b></p>
<p><span>During my presidency, I never said that my
government was socialist. First of all, when you win
an election, you have to figure out the relations
between the forces that you’ll have on your side in
order to implement political decisions. It’s important
to remember, Glenn, that when I was elected president
of the republic with a parliament of 513
representatives, I had 91 representatives from my
party. Collor and Bolsonaro, they had 50. He’s going
to need, much more than I did, to construct
allegiances with forces who will be amenable to
approving what he wants. There’s no point in his
talking of “old politics” when he’s the old politician
himself! He’s been in office for 28 years. He’s the
old politician, and I’m the new one. I had only been a
representative for four years, and I didn’t want to be
a representative anymore, and he was one for 28 years.
So enough of this “old politics” nonsense. And if you
want to run a country, you have to work with what you
have!</span></p>
<p>I ran the country that I happened to be in. I wasn’t
running France, or Germany or the U.S., I was running
Brazil. And when I arrived in office, there were 54
million people dying of hunger, who couldn’t afford to
eat breakfast, and I pledged that by the end of my term,
every person in Brazilian would have breakfast, lunch,
and dinner. I didn’t get the chance to go to college,
but I made it my duty to see to it that, since I didn’t
have the chance go to college, the workers would. For
all these reasons, even though I’m the only president
without a college degree, I wouldn’t switch places with
many people who have one, you know? I’m the president
who sent the highest number of students to university,
who opened the most public universities, who launched
the most technical schools in the history of the
country, who had the largest policies of distribution of
wealth, who raised the minimum wage the most, and who
helped the most in settling the landless.</p>
<p><b>So how do you explain the suffering that people felt
that brought Bolsonaro to office, after 14 years of PT
in power?</b></p>
<p><span>Why did I do all those things that I just
mentioned? Because I understand that if one wants to
solve the problems of Brazil, we have to use the word
“people.” We have to look at people and see human
beings instead of just seeing numbers or debt figures.
Do you want to reduce the government debt in Brazil?
Grow the economy. Do you want to reduce the welfare
debt? Create jobs. Why was the welfare at a surplus in
2014? Because we created 20 million jobs with
regularized work contracts, and because we legally
approved six million individual microenterprises. We
got the economy functioning. Just talking about cuts,
cuts, cuts won’t hack it; one needs to speak of
growth, development, and look toward people, not
toward the banks. Come on, </span><span>what kind of
growth can our country expect with a president who
goes around saluting the American flag</span><span>?</span></p>
<p><b>No, what I’m trying to ask is why you blame the rise
of Bolsonaro and other extremists on neoliberalist
ideologies. I’m trying to understand the difference in
how you ran the country, how Dilma ran the country,
and those ideologies. What differences do you see?</b></p>
<p><span>Glenn, when we started this interview, I said
clearly that PT’s biggest problems come not from its
errors, but its successes. Every time that a president
tries to enact socially-minded policies in Latin
America, they’re eventually ousted. The elite in
Brazil and in other countries don’t accept economic
development policies that contain social inclusion. PT
managed to enact — and this is according to the U.N.,
not me — the greatest changes in social inclusion in
the history of this country. It’s important to
remember that during our mandate, it was the only time
in history that the poor had a higher rate of economic
upturn than the rich. The rich made gains too, but the
poor at an even greater percentage. It was the only
time in history, and this bothered people. You should
have heard it in the Rio de Janeiro airport, in the
São Paulo airport, when people said, “This airport is
beginning to look like a bus station, with these poor
people all around, people who have never taken a plane
in their life.” </span></p>
<p><b>Yeah, so why is there so much anger in this country,
leading to Bolsonaro’s election?</b></p>
<p><span>Well now, you’re giving me the opportunity to
explain to the Brazilian people what happened. Let’s
take the case of Bolsonaro. He had 39 percent of the
total votes, not of those who went to the polls, but
39 percent of the total.</span></p>
<p><b>In the first round?</b></p>
<p><span>No, in the second round runoff. If you do the
math, he had 57 percent of the votes of people who
picked a candidate, but only 39 percent of the total
number of voters.</span></p>
<p><b>But he won by a large margin.</b></p>
<p><span>It was a third, but yes, he won. He won the
elections, but the majority of the people did not vote
for him. But why did anyone vote for him? They voted
for him because of that phrase I said earlier: “In
times of terror, many people choose a monster to
protect them.” So there were people who preferred to
believe in a lie called Bolsonaro, in a man who
preached hate, who preached violence, in a man who
hates black people, who hates gay people, who hates
poor people, in a man who said that killing was the
answer, yes, they voted for him. Why? Because the
opposition was PT, and PT had been demonized. </span></p>
<p><span>Who knows, Glenn, you know that when they ask me,
I say that maybe God didn’t want me to win the
elections back in 1989. Why? I lost in 1989, I lost in
1994, I lost in 1998, and I never got angry, nobody
ever saw me infuriated about losing. I went back home
and got ready for the next election. The hatred all
started with Dilma’s victory in 2014 — no, actually
with the demonstrations in 2013, and came to a head
when Aécio lost, and then rants against Dilma began,
and the hatred, the hatred …</span></p>
<p><b>They couldn’t accept this loss. But I want to ask
you something important, because you just said that PT
was demonized and talked about the hatred of PT. And
there’s a common criticism that I often hear about
your strategy in 2018, which is that you did
everything possible to weaken the candidacy of Ciro
Gomes of the center-left, who many think had a better
chance of beating Bolsonaro than the candidate who you
chose from your party, Fernando Haddad.</b></p>
<p><b>Because of the hate and loathing of PT in Brazil,
because Haddad was unknown outside of São Paulo. And
now this is for the international audience: In the
first runoff, Haddad ended up in second place, while
in the second runoff, Bolsonaro defeated your PT
candidate by a huge margin. The critics say that you
preferred to lose to Bolsonaro and maintain control
over the left with PT, than to have a better chance of
beating Bolsonaro if it meant letting another party,
namely Ciro’s, represent the left. Is this a valid
criticism?</b></p>
<p><span>Do you believe this?</span></p>
<p><b>Well, I’m asking what you think.</b></p>
<p><span>I’m asking if you believe this, you know why?</span></p>
<p><b>I’ll tell you what I know. I know that the candidate
who you endorsed so that he could make it to the
second round ended up losing by a large margin to
Bolsonaro, and I’m asking whether this was the right
strategy. </b></p>
<p><span>I’ll try to explain. My main strategy, my most
basic strategy, goes back to 1989. In 1989, [Leonel]
Brizola, who I remember fondly, thought he would win
the elections. Brizola came back from exile ready to
be president, but I was the one who went to the second
round runoff. Did you know Brizola asked me to give
up, so that he and I could support Mario Covas
instead? So I said, “Brizola, if the people wanted to
elect Mario Covas, they would have voted for him, so
why didn’t they? How would I look for the voters who
wanted me in office? Should I give up to support Mario
Covas who is way behind?” Really, if the people wanted
Ciro to win the second round runoff, why didn’t they
vote for him in the first round?</span></p>
<p><b>Because you endorsed Haddad and not Ciro, and
because your party also blocked his alliance with the
PSB [the Brazilian Socialist Party], and gave up a
possible candidacy for the governor of Pernambuco all
to help the PT candidate. You’ve heard all these
criticisms.</b></p>
<p><span>Come on, does Ciro really complain because PT had
the political means to bring in PCdoB [the Communist
Party of Brazil] and PSB [the Brazilian Socialist
Party]? What did he want PT to do? Nothing? He wanted
PT to talk to PSB, because …</span></p>
<p><b>You were the one who said that PT was demonized, was
always under attack …</b></p>
<p><span>Listen, let me tell you something. Ciro’s gotten
learn something, this is important in politics, and if
you ever want to go into politics, then learn this: If
you want someone to like you, then you’ve gotta learn
to like them back. If you want someone to respect you,
then you’ve got to respect people. So if Ciro really
wanted PT’s support, he could have come and discussed
things with PT. I’m gonna tell you a story that you
might not know, that nobody’s ever told, and that Ciro
never told anyone. There was a time that Mangabeira
Unger came to my office and said, “Me, Haddad, and
Ciro had a meeting, and we agreed that Haddad would be
Ciro’s vice president.” And I said, “Mangabeira, don’t
you think you should’ve discussed this with PT first?”
What do you think? Mangabeira, and now this is back in
1994, I was at a dinner at his house in Boston with
him, with the beloved Marco Aurelio Garcia, with his
beloved wife, and he says to me, “Brizola’s gonna win
the election.” I had over 20 percent of the votes, and
Brizola had none, and he says, “Brizola’s gonna win.”
So I said, “Why do you think so, Mangabeira?” And he
says, “Because as soon as Leonel Brizola gets in front
of the cameras, all of the workers will vote for him!”
And I said, “Mangabeira, you must be out of it, this
isn’t gonna happen.” Well, the elections came, and I
don’t know if you remember what happened that year.
They banned the use of outside images, and only
allowed candidates to speak directly in front of the
camera. So how many votes did Brizola get? He lost to
Enéas Carneiro. I ran again in 1994 and had 27 percent
of the votes, but there was no second round. Ciro went
to the elections, and didn’t run — no, he did, and he
got 11 percent of the votes. He then ran again in
2002, and got 11 percent or 12 percent, and last year
he ran again. </span><span>So I lost four times
before winning, and Ciro has already lost three times,
maybe he’ll have to lose once more. If Ciro wants to
make alliances, he has to learn to have conversations</span><span>,
he has to learn how to convince people, and he has to
assume certain programmatic commitments.</span></p>
<p><b>Well, Ciro will definitely hear this interview.</b></p>
<p><span>I think Ciro knows what kind of relationship I
have with him. I’ve always had a great deal of respect
for him, and I thank Ciro for working with me in my
government, and I’ll tell you something else: I
thought Ciro shouldn’t have even run for the House of
Representatives, because I invited him instead to be
the president of BNDES [the Brazilian Development
Bank].</span></p>
<p><b>Well, this is exactly the reason that he thought he
had a better chance than the candidate that you
endorsed in the second round runoff. But anyway, I
want to take this opportunity to talk a little bit
about the challenges that the left faces
internationally, because it’s really important, and
you are one of the few great leaders of the left in
the past twenty years, who managed to win national
elections in a huge nation and to reach out to the
most destitute and marginalized.</b></p>
<p><b>I think it’s really important to hear what you think
of the problems that the left is facing worldwide,
because in the majority of countries in the democratic
world, including Brazil, the left is facing great
difficulties in attracting support from lower
socioeconomic classes, but at the same time is seeing
increased support for higher classes, people with
higher education, and university degrees. So I want to
ask, what’s needed in order for the Brazilian left and
the left worldwide to be able to reconnect with the
people, as you were able to do? </b></p>
<p><span>Listen, during the economic crisis in 2008, I
discovered that the world was lacking leadership. I
went to meetings with the 20 main leaders of the
world, and I realized that nobody knew what to do. I
was worried, for example, about the EU, because the EU
had become very bureaucratic, and it was no longer the
politicians who spoke, it was the bureacrats, it was
this committe and that commission, and everything was
a committee or commission without the politicians
deciding anything. I thought this was pretty bad, you
know. </span></p>
<p><span>And in the U.S., Obama also had no way out. I
remember calling up Obama during the automobile
industry crisis and telling him my plans with the
BNDES, with the Bank of Brazil, with the Caixa
Economica — with three public banks that enabled us to
kickstart economic growth in Brazil and prevent the
crisis from strangling us. Obama regretted that in the
U.S. there was no way to have such bank involvement,
but there were ways to create development banks.
Anyway, here’s what I think the left has to do: First,
the left needs, you know … there are left-wing parties
with 100 years of experience, with 150 years of
experience, with 80 years, and PT has 40 years of
experience, and I think PT has had a very successful
experience. </span></p>
<p><span>Now, some folks have said that PT has gotten too
far removed from the people. </span><span>Listen, I
would say that PT needs to take a step back but not to
its origins — because you don’t govern for the sake of
a party, you govern for the sake of the whole society</span><span>.
When you win an election, you have to govern for the
sake of everyone, and of course you can choose who you
want to focus on serving more or less, but you have to
govern for the sake of everyone, you have to respect
everyone, you have to like everyone, you have to serve
everyone, and this was how I did things. I doubt,
Glenn, that you’ll find any other country, during my
presidency, I doubt you’ll find a mayor, a governor,
or a representative from an opposition party who had
anything bad to say about my government, because we
treated everyone with decency.</span></p>
<p><b>I agree, and you left office with an 86 percent
approval rate, and one of the most important aspects,
in my opinion, of your political appeal was your
childhood and background: that you came from poverty,
that you only learned to read at age 10, and that you
were a laborer at age 16, like millions of other
Brazilians. I want to know whether you think it’s
important for left-wing parties to be represented by
people who learned about poverty not only in theory
while in college, but who grew up in poverty
themselves and, therefore, have that experience in
their bones and can speak with credibility to the
people about poverty and about their experience. Do
you think that the Brazilian left, or the left
internationally, can manage to do this the way you
did?</b></p>
<p><span>Well, I think the </span><span>left has</span><span>
many people</span><a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/10/02/noam-chomsky-visita-lula/"><span>
who have studied very hard</span></a><span> and who
are serious intellectuals who can achieve this. What
we need is …</span></p>
<p><b>But is that the same has having experienced it?</b></p>
<p><span>What’s really needed is to be committed to these
causes. There’s no way to govern a country if … Do you
remember my attitude when I won the election? Do you
remember that I put every minister on a plane and took
them all to the four most destitute places in Brazil?
Why did I do that, anyway? I wanted [Henrique]
Meirelles, a banker, and [Antonio] Palocci, a doctor,
and [Luiz] Furlan, a businessman — I wanted them to
see a stilt house above a swamp up close, I wanted
them to see a man and woman having to defecate in the
same room they eat in, I wanted them to see the vast
number of young girls with two or three kids and no
dad around, I wanted them to see the poverty of
Jequitinhonha Valley, I wanted them to see the real
world as it is, not just the world as it is in
Brasilia. What the left needs is this kind of
commitment.</span></p>
<p><span>You’re not going to manage to govern if you can’t
define which part of the population it’s your priority
to serve. So I might like everyone, I might like
Glenn, I might like Lula, I might like anyone, but I
have to choose. Does Glenn manage to eat three meals a
day? Does Glenn have access to education? Does Glenn
own a car? Well, then Glenn isn’t my priority. The
priority are those who are downtrodden, who don’t have
what Glenn has, but who need to.</span></p>
<p><b>But to make this happen, do you think it’s important
to have candidates coming from these neighborhoods
that have real poverty and that don’t seem overly
academic?</b></p>
<p><span>No, what we have to do is prepare ourselves. I
prefer that we find candidates who come from
backgrounds with popular struggles in their blood, in
their veins, but obviously there are many good people
out there, not necessarily from poor backgrounds, who
are committed to the cause of the poor.</span></p>
<p><b>But most important is having the candidates. Do you
think this is what’s missing in Brazil?</b></p>
<p><span>Definitely. This is why the party … I think
what’s missing is more people being involved, more
women, more black people, more Indigenous people.</span></p>
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