President Lula Has Survived a Corruption Scandal
Less than six months ago Brazil's President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, appeared down and out. Racked by a campaign funding scandal that enveloped his party, he was trailing in the polls and there would doubts he would even fight for re-election.

Now the man universally known as Lula appears to have bounced back and arrives in London today for a three-day state visit. He has lost 30lbs, foresworn alcohol and been politically reinvigorated by new numbers that show his approval rating has jumped to 53.3 per cent and suggest he could win re-election in October.

Mr. da Silva has also gone back on the attack and dropped the defensive tone he adopted at the peak of the scandal.

"The scandal has been passing and people have been focusing on what the government has actually been doing," Wanderley Guillherme dos Santos, a professor of politics at the Instituto Universitario de Pesquisas in Rio de Janeiro told The Independent. The greatest threat to him running for and winning a second term was the corruption scandal that undermined his party and was firmly cemented in the popular imagination by the arrest of a political aide as he left Sao Paulo airport and was found to have $100,000 worth of Brazilian reals stuffed into his underpants.

"The scare is beginning to pass," said Ricardo Guedes, the director of the Sensus Institute. "Voters are starting to focus instead on the government's achievements," he added.
The Independent, March 6, 2006