Lula era comes to an end in Brazil

He was Brazil's first working-class president; a football-obsessed former factory worker who swapped rural poverty for the highest office in his country and helped propel 20 million people out of poverty.

Tomorrow afternoon, the curtain will finally go down on Luiz In�cio Lula da Silva's eight-year reign when his successor, the former Marxist rebel Dilma Rousseff, steps out from a 1953 Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith and into the presidential hot seat.

Attended by 11 women with whom she was imprisoned during Brazil's dictatorship, Rousseff's inauguration will mark the official end of "Era Lula".

"I don't think we managed to achieve everything that we wanted to, but I think we have done more than at any other moment in the history of this country," Lula, 65, said this month during a rare meeting with foreign journalists. "We didn't solve all of Brazil's problems but we made extraordinary steps."

Lula, the former union leader whose meteoric rise smashed the traditional mould for Brazilian political leaders, leaves behind a radically transformed nation: business is booming and the long-excluded poor are on the rise.

The past eight years have seen at least 20 million Brazilians lifted from poverty, thanks to Lula's anti-hunger and income-transfer programmes.

Direct foreign investment has tripled to about $30bn (�19bn) a year since Lula took office in 2003 and many believe that by the time Rio de Janeiro hosts the 2016 Olympics, Brazil will be the world's fifth-largest economy.

In September, Brazil's state-cont