text: An article in The Washington Post said that before 2002 Lula had been a "strident union organizer known for his bushy beard and Che Guevara T-shirts". In the 2002 campaign, Lula abandoned both his informal clothing style and his platform plank that Brazil should not pay its foreign debt unless it links the payment to a prior thorough audit. This last point had worried economists, businessmen, and banks, who feared that even a partial Brazilian default would have a massive ripple effect through the world economy. Lula in  the 2002 election, defeated PSDB candidate José Serra in a runoff, to become the country's first leftist president following the fall of the military dictatorship in Brazil. In the 2006 election, Lula won a run-off over the PSDB's Geraldo Alckmin.
  In September 2018, Brazil's top electoral court banned Lula from running for president in 2018 due to his corruption conviction, in accordance with Brazil's Lei da Ficha Limpa law. Instead, Fernando Haddad ran for president on the Workers Party ticket, and was defeated by Jair Bolsonaro.
  First presidency (2003–2011)
  Lula, described as left-wing, served two terms as president from 2003 through 2010. During his farewell speech he said he felt a burden to prove that he could handle the presidency despite his humble beginnings. "If I failed, it would be the workers' class which would be failing; it would be this country's poor who would be proving they did not have what it takes to rule".
  Political orientation
  Very few of the reforms that Lula proposed were actually implemented during Lula's terms of office. Some wings of the Worker's Party disagreed with the increasing moderation in focus since the late eighties, and left the party to form other parties, such as during Lula's presidency, the Socialism and Liberty Party. Alliances with old, traditional oligarch politicians, like former presidents José Sarney and Fernando Collor, have been a cause of disappointment for some.