Brazil's President Lula implement his own limited agrarian reform plan rather than spend the project's budget on servicing the national debt [Ramos, 2005]. Several MSTleaders met with President Lula da Silva on May 18, 2005- a meeting that had been resisted by Lula since his taking of office. The leaders presented Lula with 16 demands including economic reform, greater public spending, and public housing. In interviews with Reuters, many of the leaders said they still regarded Lula as an ally but demanded that he accelerate his promised land reforms. However, in September that year, João Pedro Stedile declared that, in terms of land reform, Lula's government was "finished". By the end of Lula's first term, it was clear that the MST had decided to act again as a separate movement, irrespective of the government's agenda. As far as the MST was concerned, the greatest gain it received from the Lula government was the non-criminalization of the movement itself- the tough anti-occupation measures taken by the Cardoso government were left in abeyance and not enforced. Attempts to officially define the MST as a "terrorist organization" were also opposed by Workers' Party congresspersons. Nevertheless, the Lula government never acted in tandem with the MST, according to a general pattern of keeping organized social movements outside the fostering of the government's agenda. However, as stated by a German author, the Lula government year after year proposed a blueprint for land reform that was regularly blocked by regional agrarian elites. Lula's election to the presidency raised the possibility of active government support for land reform, so conservative media increased their efforts to brand the MST's actions as felonies. In May 2005, Veja accused the MST of helping the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC), the most powerful prison-gang criminal organization in the São Paulo. A police phone tap recording of a conversation between PCC leaders mentioned the MST; one of them said he had "just talked with the leaders of the MST", who would "give instructions" to the gang about the best ways to stage what became the largest protest by prisoners' relatives in Brazilian history. On April 18, 2005 some 3,000 relatives protested prevailing conditions in São Paulo correctional facilities. The MST "leaders" were not named. No MST activist, real or alleged, took part in the taped conversations. The MST denied any link in a formal written statement calling the supposed evidence hearsay, and