As Jair Messias Bolsonaro arrived in a convertible Rolls Royce at the ceremony in Brasilia on New Year’s Eve 2019 to be nominated president, the first far-right in Brazilian history, the man who will succeed him this Sunday is Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , was imprisoned in a police station, not in a prison, in his capacity as a former head of state for corruption. Lula read books like never before in his life, exchanged a daily letter with his girlfriend (now his wife), who sent him pots of homemade food, worked out and worked with lawyers and his closest associates in a political comeback that sounded crazy at the time: because his age – he is 77 years old – and because of the series of court cases he had pending. He has never stopped declaring his trust in Brazilian institutions and that he has been the victim of persecution.
When he receives the presidential sash in front of the modernist and glass-enclosed Planalto Palace this Sunday, it will be a surprising political resurrection. He returns to rewrite his legacy, with a mission to rebuild social policies and post-Bolsonaro democracy, with a dream to be remembered inside and outside his country as the Lula of the glory days, not the legal ones Odyssey.
The Jan. 1 ceremony will also mark the anniversary of the extraordinary moment Lula led 20 years ago, when he became the first worker – and first leftist – to come to power in an unequal and class-based country where some privileged neighborhoods are workers they are still forced to use elevators other than those of their employers.
In the new year of 2003, Lula announced that his great mission as president would be that every Brazilian would have breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. It was for a while, but with the pandemic, hunger returned. Today there are more than 33 million Brazilians who do not know whether they will have dinner tonight or breakfast tomorrow. Fighting hunger and poverty will be the new president’s priorities alongside economic recovery and strengthening democracy. “We have to create jobs, pay wages, distribute income and ensure that people suffer less than before,” announced the president-elect this Thursday in Brasilia when presenting the surnames of his cabinet. He passionately defends that the poor also have the right to enjoy the pleasures of life and to be happy. For this campaign, he rephrased the 2002 slogan “hope conquers fear” as “love conquers hate”.
He takes over from ex-military Bolsonaro a president who did not recognize Lula’s victory, the most hard-fought in history (nearly two million votes, 1.8 points). He will take power in a highly polarized environment where even the specter of terrorism has loomed with a failed plot by a Bolsonaro supporter. Bolsonaro himself condemned this action on Thursday. In addition to bombs the likes of which have never been seen in this country, Brazil was rocked two months ago by radical groups camping out in front of barracks across the country, convinced they stole the elections and demanding the military do as ordered in 1964. This order means Lula will be barred from returning to the presidency to make them say, “Brazil is not a communist country, not Venezuela.”
In the new year of 2003, Lula as president was a great unknown, a hopeful promise. After being defeated three times in the presidential election, he rose to power with a comfortable victory. All of Brazil, with the exception of one state (Alagoas), was colored the red of the Workers’ Party (PT). He embodied the dream of the dispossessed masses and the fears of the markets he wanted to assuage.
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Now the country is divided in half. The north is Lula red, the south is Bolsonarista blue. And the outgoing president’s allies dominate Congress, even though everything is negotiable in both chambers. The price varies. In these two decades, Brazilian society has swung to the right, with evangelicals gaining a place in society, politics, the music industry and the Supreme Court. And the economic winds that blew in Lula’s favor during his first two terms in office are now blowing against him.
The denial and inhumane management of the pandemic has sunk Bolsonaro, elected to save Brazil from corruption and the evils of the PT. That, along with his strategy of attacking democracy and institutions, turned Lula, who four years ago was a political corpse and one of the most hated guys in Brazil, into the long-awaited solution to end a dark period. Hatred of the Labor Party evaporated, the red PT was no longer banned on the streets. And when it became clear that the election would be a one-on-one between Lula and Bolsonaro with a clear advantage for the former, the economic powerhouse resorted to pragmatism and recalled how well he had done in the presidency.
With the skills of a negotiator and strategist that even his enemies acknowledge, Lula managed to persuade opponents from across the ideological spectrum to join his leadership to cut off the far right and halt the authoritarian drift. “This is not a victory for Lula or the PT,” he said in his victory speech.
The challenge is huge. And the expectations are the same. Brazil’s economy has not grown in a decade, budget constraints are tight, false news and misinformation have severely damaged institutions’ credibility, and satisfying the unlikely partners who brought them to power requires the skills of a good alchemist.
Although the transition has gone smoothly despite the noise from Bolsonaristas clamoring for a coup and the silence from Bolsonaro himself, Lula has suffered from forming the cabinet and dividing portfolios, power and budget among his allies. And that he had 37 services to offer.
But he left the really strategic ministries to the veterans of his party. And on the economy, he got away with it despite the concerns of the elites. He has entrusted economic policy to stalwart Fernando Haddad, the man who agreed four years ago to replace him as PT candidate when he was incarcerated. It has suffered from fitting into the ministries’ jigsaw puzzle. Three days after taking office, he announced the surnames. He will govern with nine parties.
The Lula, who will begin his third term as president in 2023, is of course also different from 2003. He has government experience, he has gone through the appointment of a successor, Dilma Roussef, who was sacked on August 31, 2016 amid a great wave of dissatisfaction of the population. And he himself knows what it means to fall from grace and spend 580 days in prison for the corruption that kept him from running for the presidency in 2018. The trials against him crumbled like sugar cubes because the judge who jailed him, now Senator Sérgio Moro – such is the intrigue in Brazilian soap operas – was not impartial.
Lula led the wave of the Latin American left in the early 21st century, bringing the aspirations of the poor and the aspirations of Brazil and the global South to the conclaves of the most powerful. He conquered cancer. His story captivated his countrymen. And to the world. He left the presidency with a popularity rating of over 87%. With the Brazilian constitution prohibiting a third consecutive term, he embarked on an international career as a retired politician, which he had to give up as legal troubles mounted. widowed
New Year’s Day is well supported by the international community, with almost twenty heads of state, including King Felipe VI of Spain, who has already attended his other two inaugurations, the presidents of Argentina, Colombia, Chile or Portugal. The Spanish delegation also includes Vice President Yolanda Díaz and Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares.
It’s not known who will give him the presidential sash, but Bolsonaro is ruled out. The far right will spend his term thousands of miles from Brasilia in Florida. This Friday he flew to Trumpist countries after delivering his final speech as head of state. His successor just wants him to remain silent. “Whoever lost the elections, shut up. Whoever wins has the right to celebrate a big people’s party,” he said on Thursday. Shortly before, he had reminded his future ministers to prepare because he likes to work a lot and do many things at the same time and they are all younger than him.
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