Brazil candidates jostle for Lula's golden touch

By Stuart Grudgings

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Listening to Joao Castelo effusively praise President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, it is easy to forget that he is standing for the opposition in Brazil's nationwide local elections on Sunday.

"President Lula is working very hard for the country and doesn't have anything against anyone," Castelo, who is leading polls for mayor of Sao Luis in northeastern Maranhao state, said in a recent interview with local television.

"The president doesn't have an owner," he added, justifying his support for a politician whose Workers' Party is the main rival of his Brazilian Social Democracy Party.

As raucous campaigning for thousands of mayor and councilor posts winds up this week, Lula has no shortage of "owners" with candidates across Brazil seeking his golden electoral touch.

After nearly six years in power, in which Brazil has begun to fulfill its long-squandered economic potential and make deep inroads into poverty, the former labor leader's popularity is at levels not seen since his early days in power.

"Lula is riding this huge economic growth and transformation story. It's astounding that his approval ratings are higher than during his first year in office," said Christopher Garman, the Latin America director at Eurasia Group in Washington.

"He is certainly much bigger than the Workers' Party."

A poll this week showed the president's approval rating at 80 percent. Respondents regularly tell pollsters they have seen big improvements in jobs and social welfare benefits under Lula.

The burly, charismatic Lula, 62, rose from poverty in the northeast to lead the country of 190 million, toning down his more radical proposals and winning over investors with market-friendly policies once he was elected in 2002.

The ideological shift has disillusioned some in his party and in the labor movement from which Lula emerged, even as millions of people have been lifted out of poverty.

"His government is the same as those before it, different from what he promised," said Alexander Brasil, a 43-year-old judiciary union member protesting against the Rio de Janeiro state government at an event Lula attended on Monday.

"Lula is gaining support from his system of federal handouts."

For every disappointed worker like Brasil, however, there are many more who feel their prospects have improved under Lula.

"PLAY TOGETHER"

In the poor northeast, where Lula is wildly popular thanks to his family stipend program Bolsa Familia, Castelo is one of several opposition candidates using Lula's images on television commercials. The election tribunal has ordered several candidates, including Castelo, to stop using them.