Brazil entered a new political stage with president Lula's inauguration on this January 1st. after eight years of bent knees, neglect regarding social rights and the mutilation of the Constitution that characterized the accursed era of president Cardoso, Brazil now has the unprecedented opportunity to rescue its sovereignty, to promote social justice and to consolidate the democratic regime.

The Brazilian people's overwhelming joy was the reaffirmation of the hope, expectations and trust manifested during the election. Never before a president was so acclaimed during the ceremony of inauguration; never before the passing of the presidential sash aroused such optimism. The nation feels like it is meeting its destiny. If there were doubts regarding the people's tendency to support the new government, they were dissipated before the undisputable force of the facts.

During the two speeches he made, the new president, with the great responsibility of being the "public servant number one" while maintaining caution and moderation, reaffirmed the commitments that justified his election: "Change. That is the key word. That was the great message of the Brazilian society at the elections in October. We will surely change. We will change with courage and care. With humbleness and boldness. We will change with the awareness that change is a gradual and continuous process and not a simple act of will, not a careless act of voluntarism".

That was what the people, the true owners for the party, wanted to hear, taking those words not as a promise, but as an unchangeable commitment, the true and essential inauguration swearing.

In the name of making the changes feasible, many of which with a character of emergency, the people is willing to gather around a new government in order to perform the great civic movement to which it has been called, surpassing obstacles and winning the great challenges and difficulties. The political forces represented in the government, among which the communists, have the duty of making the people aware of the fact that it will be necessary to keep mobilized in order to help Lula's administration to fulfill its desires.

The political awareness and the popular mobilization impose themselves with greater force as the pressures of imperialists, neoliberals and defeated forces intensify with a view to keep everything in the same conditions. As part of this pressure they try to glorify the figure of the former president and to make his two mandates enter history as progressist ones, which, on the contrary of the promised modernity, maintained the country in its backwardness and underdevelopment, economically stagnated and socially unfair. The balance of the Cardoso era is more than 50 million Brazilians living under the line of poverty, a dependent and vulnerable country and an unviable economic policy. It consists of eight years of shadows, a faded and vile sadness that lasted too long.

The exercise of power during the Cardoso era was strongly characterized by the worst traits of the former president's personality: arrogance and an imperial style. Turning his backs to the nation, he shared his government with the representatives of the international financial capital.
Lula inaugurates a new style. A man of the people, he is intensely committed to democracy. Since his electoral campaign and after his election, with the plural composition of his ministries, he reveals a trend to balance the democratic, nationalist and popular forces.

The Brazilian progressist forces accumulate a precious political capital in the recent electoral process and in the deals for constituting the new government. The political unity, the method of consensus, the work as a single front, the programmatic maturity and the comprehension of reality are the constitutive elements of this capital. And the forces of change under the leadership of president Lula must work with them. And win with them.