Finally interviewing Brazilian President Lula da Silva
I am standing on a balcony sixteen floors above the Amazon leaning on the railing talking with Brazil’s President Lula.
An exceptional life story has taken him from a 12-year-old shoeshine boy, via work at a sheet metal factory where he lost the little finger of his left hand in an industrial accident, to his founding and leading of a steel workers Union, to the point where now he is seven years into the presidency of one of the biggest countries on earth.
Perhaps five foot seven or eight, with his distinctive grey beard, he is charismatic and exuberant – younger than his sixty-four years.
He has come to personify the leadership in the south in the battle to combat climate change. Yet he is also pragmatic – desperate to protect economic growth to give others like himself the chance to break from poverty and join Brazil’s booming economic development.
I met him first on platform three at St Pancras station in London. For years I have wanted to secure an interview with him. But coming in from Paris, where he enjoys a close relationship with Sarkozy and his ministers (indeed Sarko has been here again in the past few days), Lula had been on his way to the G20 summit in London earlier this years.
Though we exchanged pleasantries on the platform there was no time for an interview. I have been chasing him ever since.
Finally I got the chance here in Manaus in the heart of the Amazon rain forest. It was no disappointment.
He is direct, calls a spade a spade, doesn’t mince words, is passionate about fighting both climate change and poverty and argues that the two issues are inextricably linked.
Sometimes, when I am waiting for a plane, or for an interview to start I play a game. I call it Mandela’s high table. Who would you have round the great man’s table together?
Amartya Sen, the great Nobel prize winning economist who won it for his work on poverty; Mandela himself; Wangari Maathai the Kenyan environmentalist, and undoubtedly Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Who else? We can return to that another Snowblog. But our interview on Channel 4 News tonight is fabulously animated, controversial, and provides a vital insight into thinking in the south ahead of Copenhagen.
Oh, and just in case you are interested, he wholeheartedly supports England’s bid to stage the World Cop in 2018.
Back on the balcony of the hotel after the interview he pulled out a small packet of Brazil nuts handing me one in his thumb and forefinger for me to savour. Too good to eat.
I kept it – after all, it’s not every day that the president of Brazil gives you one his country’s namesake nuts.
In parting he took my hand in both of his and spoke of what a good and supportive friend Gordon Brown had been to him especially in the early days of his presidency.
And then, giving me an enormous bear hug, Lula bid me goodbye.