BRAZIL: A little over two years ago Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was South America's most popular politician. Back then an opinion poll showed that the former shoeshine boy who rose to become Brazil's first left-wing president would have cantered home in Argentina's presidential election had he been a candidate.
Across the continent the man known to everyone as "Lula" was seen as the natural leader of a new generation of democratically elected leftists that would finally tackle the gross inequalities that scar the region's societies.
Now having passed the halfway point of his first term President Lula is suffering a severe case of the mid-term blues. Much of the initial enthusiasm that accompanied his first year in power has dissipated and an air of crisis hangs over his Workers Party administration.
As recent events have lined up to conspire against him people are questioning for the first time since he took office in January 2003 the previously received wisdom that he would stroll to re-election in October of next year.
With Brazil's long presidential election cycle looming, several of his flagship policies are widely seen to be in trouble while his government has become bogged down in corruption allegations just as the economy starts slowing.
Zero Hunger, a social programme to battle hunger which was the touchstone promise of Lula's 2002 election campaign, is said to be bogged down in administrative red tape amid reports that assistance is often bypassing those most in need.
Lula's commitment to protecting the Amazon rainforest is openly questioned as figures last month show that 2004 was the second worst year on record for deforestation prompting the Green Party to quit Lula's coalition saying it lacked the will to tackle the problem.
The failure to curb surging rural violence was highlighted by the murder in February of Dorothy Stang, a US nun who worked in the rainforest for decades to protect Indian tribes and smallholders from loggers and ranchers who illegally clear land of trees and people, often with the connivance of local authorities.
The country's powerful Landless Movement has stepped up its occupations of large country estates, determined to put pressure on Lula's administration which it claims is failing to keep its promise to reform one of the world's most unequal land settlements.
Violence is still endemic in the cities. March's massacre of 30 innocent bystanders by off-duty police in Rio shows the problem is not confined to criminals. And there is no sign of Brazil's huge gulf between rich and poor being narrowed - a recent survey found that only Sierra Leone has a more unequal distribution of national income.
Then, just as the government was struggling to make headway against all these perennial Brazilian problems it has been broadsided by a series of allegations of corruption against the Workers Party and its allies in government.
The Workers Party has loudly proclaimed its innocence and has now reluctantly agreed to congressional hearings into the allegations.
The ruling bloc insists that the uproar is the clearest signal yet that the long run-in to the October 2006 presidential elections has already started. Some in government have even accused the opposition of trying to create a crisis similar to the one that precipitated the right-wing military coup in 1964.
Recent opinion polls show Lula now faces a run-off round against an as yet unnamed candidate from the main opposition party, instead of what had seemed an easy first round victory.
As the polls tighten the opposition is making life more difficult for the government than during its first two years in power. But many of the problems faced by Lula and his team are not due to the opposition but are a result of the inherent difficulty of ruling a state like Brazil, especially for a movement in power for the first time.
Lula is in charge of one of the world's most decentralised states. The federal government has to share power with the 26 state governments and thousands of municipalities. Competing bureaucracies and political rivalries in most areas of government work to thwart whatever is decided in the capital Brasília.
Charged with executing his policies is a sprawling bureaucracy. Brazil collects almost 40 per cent of its GDP in taxes - close to the tax take of European governments that fund lavish welfare states. But critics say too much of it goes on paying for an overstaffed civil service with a generous pension system and not enough reaches the country's needy.
And when taxes do go on public services they are often spent in a way that benefits society's well-off instead of the poor. The most glaring example is in education. A large percentage of Brazil's education budget funds an excellent, free, public university system. Almost half of those who attend come from the richest 10 per cent of society - those best able to afford to pay for their education. Meanwhile Brazil's primary system is often rudimentary, leaving the country with one of the highest illiteracy rates on the continent.
Politically the Workers Party is hampered by a political system that encourages party fragmentation leaving it without a majority in congress where it relies on allies and small parties who hire themselves out to the highest bidder. This combined with a large patronage system makes for pork barrel politics and provides multiple opportunities for corruption.
These days many of Lula's speeches include a plea for patience with his government, which has belatedly committed itself to bringing forward some of the long promised reforms most agree are needed by the system in Brasília.
But critics say the multiple obstacles faced by the government should have only spurred it to greater action earlier. "The Workers Party could have introduced the necessary political reforms earlier. It could have put Lula's presidential prestige behind reforms. Why not? The political leadership is responsible for leading the country," says Cláudio Weber Abramo of Transparencia Brasil, part of the global Transparency network which promotes reforms to combat corruption.
Perhaps the harshest criticism of the Workers Party has come from former colleagues on the left who question if it is interested in reform at all.
"The Workers Party has ceased to be a reformist party and instead has become an administrative party. It is just another member of the status quo," says Prof Plinio Sampaio jnr, a Workers Party economist who quit the party earlier this year.
Prof Sampaio and other leftist dissidents say the Workers Party has been co-opted by Brazil's elite and the international financial system.
They argue that it has abandoned efforts to tackle Brazil's gross inequalities in favour of pursuing IMF-endorsed economic policies.
These demand that the government run a large primary budget surplus to pay massive interest payments on its gigantic debt, the biggest in the developing world.
Lula raged against the accumulation of this debt while in opposition.
Now in power he is its hostage. Any hint he wants to renegotiate it, or even default, would spark a financial crisis. The catastrophe that engulfed Argentina in 2001-02 serves as a warning.
Lula's hope is that most economists are right when they insist that the hard decisions on the economy that the Workers Party is taking now will reward Brazil in the longer term with sustainable growth and what the president calls "real jobs". His problem is that economists work to a different timeline than politicians.
The slow rate of change could mean electoral difficulties next year, regardless of the country's brighter long-term prospects. The Workers Party has spent the last two years showing voters it can run Brazil as well as the traditional political establishment. Now it needs to convince its supporters it still has the desire to change it.