Santiago, December 3, 2002 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - In a speech at the La Moneda Palace, following an encounter with president Ricardo Lagos, president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva affirmed that the 52 million votes he received in the 2002 presidential elections and the large movement now underway in the country in support of his future administration are due to an alliance led by the Left, capable of uniting diverse political and ideological sectors. According to the president-elect, his party, the PT, grasped, "in this long and intense period of struggle," that the strengthening of political democracy must necessarily be accompanied by an enlargement of economic and social democracy. (DAS)