Fernando Haddad

When I'm out there on the streets, I enjoy meeting people and listening to their complaints and critiques. It's something that I take great pleasure in. ”

I really believe in the power of social control coming from within the community itself. The community protecting itself, its children, its teenagers, you know? I think that's far more effective than a police presence. ”

Lula aimed to both internationalize big Brazilian capital and improve the domestic market and the condition of the poorest in Brazil. In the gaze of a lot of people, this was a big contradiction, but for Lula, this was the most natural thing in the world, to think about these two things together. ”

I would say that I am an academic in politics. I have never abandoned my academic approach to observe reality, independently from the subject and its constant changes. ”

A lot of people abroad know Lula's campaigns against poverty and hunger, but he had a tremendous legacy in education too. He invested 2 percent of GDP, more than other administration, putting the PT's education programs in motion. ”

Without public investment, without families spending, without cheap credit, the economy won't recover. ”

Taken as a whole, the work of Marx, at the same times it shows the thesis of the growing pauperization of the non-propertied classes, relativizes it when contemplating the possibility that the class struggles result in distributive effects. ”

My father - a Lebanese-origin small businessman - had a stroke in 1997 and couldn't work anymore. I paused my career and made sure he was taken care of by overseeing the sale of his businesses, but after that, I was able to dedicate myself to politics. It's what I had always wanted. ”

We combine fiscal responsibility with social responsibility. ”

Lula's political culture translated into a government project that sought to include the poor in the budget with minimal efforts in terms of structural transformation. The inclusion of the poor would trigger the economy, creating a virtuous cycle of mass consumption market, increased tax collection, more investments, and more benefits. ”