A US newspaper report over the weekend alleging that Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had a drinking problem was branded "calumny and defamation" by a presidential spokeswoman.
A lengthy article, headlined "Brazilian leader's tippling becomes national concern," in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, brought swift denunciations from the president's staff.
PHOTO: AP
"We do not consider this article to be valid journalism," presidential spokeswoman Marcia Ornelas said Sunday.
"It is a piece of calumny and defamation and shows a prejudice against the president," the spokeswoman said.
Andre Singer, Silva's chief of communications, said on Sunday night that Brazil's ambassador to the US, Roberto Abdenur, has been instructed "to transmit to the publication in question the indignation and surprise of the Brazilian government at the gratuitous insults aimed at the president."
Singer added that "the president's social habits are moderate and in line with those of average Brazilians."
The Times article noted that Silva is frequently seen in photographs and TV news clips with a glass of whiskey or domestic rum in his hand. It also quoted a one-time political ally, former Rio de Janeiro Governor Leonel Brizola, as warning Silva that "distilled beverages are dangerous."
In a press statement, Silva's personal secretary Gilberto Carvalho said: "The Brazilian government should study harsh measures against a report such as this."
Ornelas said a defamation suit against the Times was "a possibility," but added that no decision regarding such an action had been taken as of Sunday. She said top presidential aides were due to meet yesterday to discuss fallout from the article and a possible legal response.
The writer of the article, Times correspondent Larry Rohter, was traveling outside Brazil and was unavailable for comment Sunday, his secretary said. Members of the newspaper's Corporate Communications Department were not immediately available for comment.
Ornelas said Silva was spending the weekend with his family in the presidential palace in Brasilia.
Allegations about potentially damaging personal habits and characteristics have been a part of Brazil's political scene for decades.
The diaries of Getulio Vargas, published in the 1990s, showed what medical experts called a tendency toward depression in the man who served longest as Brazilian president, a total of 18 years from the 1930s through the early 1950s. In 1954, Vargas committed suicide rather than face impeachment and trial for corruption in Brazil's Congress.
A president who was impeached, Fernando Collor de Mello, was dogged during his two-year presidency by allegations of cocaine use, which he always vehemently denied.
De Mello was impeached and removed from office in 1992 when corruption charges rocked his administration.
Historians have long pointed to alcohol abuse as part of a pattern of volatile behavior that undermined the brief presidency of Janio Quadros, who resigned as chief executive after only seven months in 1961, igniting a long political crisis that finally resulted in two decades of military rule starting in 1964.
Brazilians, on the other hand, have been traditionally more forgiving of their politicians than citizens of other countries.
Recent biographies of Juscelino Kubitschek, the president who built the shining new capital of Brasilia in the late 1950s, point out that frequent gossip about the president's womanizing during his term did little to tarnish his reputation with voters.
The knowledge that Silva had fathered an illegitimate daughter in the 1970s did not prevent voters from giving him a landslide victory in the 2002 presidential election.
Silva has acknowledged his paternity of Lurian Cordeiro.
A former lathe operator with a fifth-grade education, Silva has been given wide latitude by most voters in Brazil, a country in which two-thirds of the population characterizes itself as being part of the rural or urban working class.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS