SAO PAULO – Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, forced to rely on an unwieldy coalition since taking office in 2003, said that even Jesus Christ would have to cut deals with other parties if he wanted to govern the giant South American nation.

“If Christ came here and Judas had votes in whichever party, Christ would have to call Judas and form a coalition,” Lula said in an exclusive interview published Thursday by the daily Folha de Sao Paulo.

“Whoever wins the elections – it could be the biggest (radical) Shiite or the biggest rightist – can’t put together a government divorced from political realities. The gap between what you’d like to do and what’s possible is the size of the Atlantic,” the president added.

Lula, a former Marxist labor leader elected in 2002 and re-elected four years later, was alluding to the broad alliance he has striven to maintain.

Doing so has meant, among other things, supporting Senate leader Jose Sarney – a member of the broad-based Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, Brazil’s largest – despite corruption scandals and charges of nepotism surrounding his tenure.

The president, who enjoys high approval ratings in Brazil and has been widely praised by foreign investors for his pragmatic policies, said of his popularity that he knows it is something relative and subject to change.

“I’ve learned during the course of my life to fall and get back up. Public-opinion polls are like having your blood pressure checked,” he said.

Lula, who is barred from seeking another term, also praised presidential chief of staff Dilma Rousseff, his chosen candidate to represent the governing Workers’ Party, or PT, in the 2010 presidential election.

“Dilma is the most competent manager the state has had. Her capacity for work, competence, political past and present convince me that she’s an exceptional candidate,” he said.

But polls show Rousseff badly trailing the likely opposition standard-bearer, Sao Paulo state Gov. Jose Serra.

In explaining the surprising fact that an extremely popular president’s hand-picked successor could run a distant second in the polls, Lula noted that the PT still has not officially selected her as its candidate.

“Vote transference is not magic. We’re going to work so we can transfer all the prestige of the government and the president to our candidate,” Lula said.

He also denied that a potential Rousseff presidency would in effect be “Lula’s third term,” as sectors of the opposition have claimed.

“The king is dead, long live the king. Dilma in office will have to create her own identity, her own style, her own form of governing,” Lula said. EFE