Exclusive nterview of Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) with Andr? Urani, Executive Director, Institute for Studies on Work and Society (Instituto de Estudos de Trabalho e Sociedade), Rio de Janeiro, on the presidential elections in Brazil won by Bulgaria-descended Dilma Rousseff. By Ivan Dikov

How would you characterize briefly the economic policies of the Cabinet of President Inacio Lula in brazil that apparently have made him very popular?

I think that the Lula government has been very well regarded by the public opinion in Brazil. Especially because he was somehow lucky to benefit from a long-running process of transformation of the Brazilian economic, political and social situation since the early 1980s.

Brazil has done a lot of stuff. From the end of WWII to the early 1980s Brazil was for the world what China is now, growing very fast. That model of development concluded in the early 1980s, when we had an economic crisis which disrupted the authoritarian political regime.

Since then we have been going through many different kinds of reforms. First, a transition from the authoritarian regime to democracy. Second, a new constitution with a lot of new civil rights. Then the opening to the rest of the world. Brazil was a very closed economy and society till the end of the 1980s.

Then in the 1990s, Brazil stabilized its inflation rates, which were very high, and reformed its financial system, even the role of the state.

In the late 1990s, for the first time in Brazilian history we started to have some public policy towards the poorest people in Brazil.

And finally, basically, Lula arrives and deepens the policy towards the poorest and this was remarkable; he has maintained the fundamentals of the economic policy which had prevailed before. I wouldn't be able to speak of a Lula phenomenon outside this big picture of a long-run perspective.

What would you say about Dilma Rousseff as a candidate for the presidency? She is an economist and has been involved in the energy sector. What would you say about her record in the economic field? What could be expected from her for the economy if she gets elected?

My own perspective is that Brazil is to go further in the sense that after a quarter of a century of consolidation of the democratic regime, and the economic, institutional, and social reforms, we should now try to go forward with a new agenda.

However, none of the final candidates - neither Dilma, nor Serra represent this new agenda. Both have somehow been shaped by the ideas of development that have prevailed in the second half of the last century.

And Brazil should have a very strong competitive advantage - energy. The energy substitution and sustainability are clearly two factors that will be very dynamic in the world in the next few years that could create a lot of new job opportunities for many Brazilians.

This has been in the mainstream candidates' agenda but only rhetorically in the sense that in the first round another candidate, Marina Silva won 20 million votes, and she tried to capture these issues.

The others did not really present a clear strategy for transforming these sectors in a dynamic state of the Brazilian economy in the next few years.

For the final round we had two good candidates which represent the old agenda. Both Serra and Dilma have the same kind of mind that they are talking very strongly about the manufacturing sector, the oil, old resources, and a little about what can be the new opportunities.

How would you characterize the presidential competition in Brazil where both Dilma Rousseff and Jose Serra have had ups and downs ?

Clearly, Dilma Rousseff has been the favorite. The polls have made a lot of errors in the last few weeks. It will be hard to govern for the new president because of a strong proportion of Congress that will sell its support very expensively.

Has Dilma's Bulgarian origin been mentioned during the final days of the presidential race, and in what context?

It is mentioned that she comes from Bulgaria, that her family comes from Bulgaria. But everybody in Brazil comes from somewhere. For example, my family is from Italy, we are an open society in that respect.

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