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Re-elected Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced his second term will be dominated by political dialogue, government reforms and economic growth to ensure the battle against poverty continues and Brazil definitively abandons the "emerging countries" group.
However analysts believe Lula da Silva's agenda will be more conditioned to cutting endemic corruption and government inefficiency, plus reforms that effectively boost economic growth if the promised goals are to be achieved in his second four-year mandate. Political dialogue to build a coalition is essential because in spite of the president's landslide support, his Workers Party lost Congressional seats and will need to reach an agreement with the leading force in Congress, the PMDB, if reforms are to be passed. Reforms include taxing and fiscal, political and labor and another attempt with social security, a nut which has proved too hard to crack for his first term and previous administrations. And even if he manages a workable coalition, which could include a shared cabinet, the main opposition party, PSDB of defeated Geraldo Alckmin promises to keep bashing the Lula administration with the corruption scandals of his Workers Party that have stunned Brazilian public opinion and forced the president to Sunday's runoff. "Many investigations were set aside for the elections, and the opposition will want to pick them up and go deeper," says João Augusto de Castro Neves, a political scientist at the Brazilian Institute of Political Studies. "They don't want to work with him, so they will hit him as hard as they can; any small mistake will be seized upon. Everything indicates that the climate will be even more combative than before." Besides, the election showed a divided Brazil along geographic and economic lines: Lula won in the poorer north and Alckmin in the more prosperous south. His solid north support can be tracked to the wide reaching assistance program that makes monthly payments to at least eleven million families. Reforms are considered vital to boost the Brazilian economy that under the Lula administration has grown at an average 2.6% annually, half Latinamerica average and well behind rival developing nations such as China, India, Korea and even neighboring Argentina's 9%. Brazil has the highest tax burden and highest interest rates in the region and a budget that officials admit will have to be slashed. President Lula's spending pledges have raised concern among some investors after the government boosted expenditures 16% in the first nine months of the year, more than the 12.8% increase in tax collection during the same period. But according to Lula's promises, "we're going to have a strict fiscal policy" and insisted "we can't spend more than we earn". Lula said he expects the Brazilian economy to grow 5% next year and pledged to lower social security costs, limit bureaucracy and improve conditions for investment in the country. Some of that growth will be powered by infrastructure projects already underway. However Tarso Genro, political coordinator and main advisor of President Lula was more loquacious: "Low growth rates and a neurotic concern with inflation without taking into account income distribution are over". According to the American Chamber of Commerce in Brazil chairman Hélio Magalhães, from a business point of view "the tax burden needs to be reduced, government spending has to come down, and social security needs to be reformed because it generates such a huge deficit. And the government needs to invest in infrastructure to create the conditions for long-term investment". President Lula finally said that in spite of "a strict fiscal policy", in the coming four years Brazil will abandon the category of "emerging country" and join the developed nations club. "We have the foundations for an extraordinary quality leap in this coming four years; we solved the macroeconomics problem but now we're tired of being an emerging power: the Brazilian people hope things will move improve and move much faster". "If in my first mandate we advanced at 80 kilometers per hour, in these next four years we'll be advancing at 120 kilometers per hour", he promised. Finance Minister Guido Mantega who is expected to remain in the new cabinet said he favored a gradual approach to cutting the budget gap. The budget deficit is currently in the range of 3.5% of GDP and is kept under control with extremely high interest rates. "I'm proposing a gradual annual accumulated reduction of 0.1 to 0.2% on current expenditure" he said. The Brazilian government current expenditure has risen to 17.6% of GDP in the last four years. Brazilian inflation is in the range of 5% but the Central Bank basic reference rate is above 14%. Mercopress
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The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.
End results ? Economic growth rate 0,5 % in 2003, 5 % in 2004, 2,3 % in 2005 and probably around 3 % for 2006.
Yeahhhhh a truly great performance when compared to the other developing countries, either your neighbours or elswhere !
In 2005 Brazil had the lowest growth rate of ALL developing countries !
Congratulations.....Lula !
In 2005 Brazil had the 2nd lowest growth rate of ALL LATAM and Caribean Countries......after Haïti....which is one of the poorest country in this planet and not even a developing country but a LDC !
Congratulations...Lula !
And to his so proud Bolsa Familia and caring for the poors, here are interesting stats, not necessarily a compliment : " the INSS rose from 6.5 per cent of gross domestic product in 2002 to an estimated 7.8 per cent this year - dwarfing the 0.4 per cent of GDP spent on income transfer programmes such as Bolsa Família.s for the Bolsa Familia"
Yesssssss Lula is proud to provide 0,4 % of GDP to the 45 millions poorest citizens. (23 % of the population)
And he is as proud to provide less than 2 % of the Federal Budget of Reais 455 billion for 2006 to the Bolsa Familia while providing 23 % of this budget to Federal civil servants salaries and perks alone, representing only 2 % of the population.
Congratulations....LULA ! You have betrayed your electors during the first 4 years, no doubt you will betray them even more during your second 4 years mandate !
Your ignorant citizens are swallowing ALL your lies.....just as you expected and still expect !