Lula returns democratic normality to Brazil after the roller coaster of Bolsonaro's mandate

President Lula will not be perfect, but he has fulfilled the main mission entrusted to him by the electorate. When this New Year marks one year since Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 78, returned to the Presidency of Brazil at the culmination of an extraordinary political resurrection, the country lives settled in peace. Democracy has regained its momentum and institutional normality reigns after the turbulent four years of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro. This third term of Lula began with the Bolsonaro coup attempt on January 8 – and neutralized within hours – and ends with a timid tax reform that is historic because the reform of the unjust tax system was processed more than three decades ago. The fight against hunger – 15% of the population goes to bed with an empty stomach – against poverty and the protection of the Amazon are once again a priority under the Lula Government. Meanwhile, his predecessor is disqualified.

The Brazilian economy has given the veteran president more joy than foreign policy. Brazil was welcomed with open arms upon its return to international forums, the improvement in deforestation figures has been applauded, but the boomerang effect of the mediation attempts in Ukraine demonstrated how difficult it is to achieve diplomatic successes in a world that is much more complex than in his previous period in power, at the beginning of the century.

From the outside, the most populated democracy in Latin America has become a kind of oasis of stability in the face of the earthquake that the ultraliberal Javier Milei has caused in Argentina, the unexpected fear of a war in Essequibo due to the political calculations of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, the constitutional ups and downs in Chile and the authoritarian drift of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.

The Brazilian president has dedicated this year to making his motto a reality, Rebuild Brazil, after the havoc caused to democracy, institutions, the balance of powers, and the environment by his predecessor. Part of his voters elected Lula precisely for that reason, to save democracy from the attacks of Bolsonaroism, rather than out of unwavering support for his positions and proposals.

Its main achievement is that the Brazilian political debate once again revolves around the major socioeconomic problems and the difficulties of obtaining enough support to approve laws, not around the humor in the barracks, the criminalization of the adversary or conspiracy theories.

“The comparison effect is of limited duration,” he wrote this Sunday in Folha de S.Paulo analyst Bruno Boghossian. “Not planning a coup, not threatening the courts, not wasting vaccines, not destroying the country's reputation counts for a lot, but it is insufficient,” he warns.

The lack of a parliamentary majority is the great obstacle that the president and his team face right now. The leader of the Brazilian left won the elections at the head of a broad coalition forged to save democracy and presides over a Cabinet that includes the right. The municipal elections at the end of 2024 will give an idea of ​​the correlation of political forces in a Brazil that emerged from the presidential elections split in two.

Bolsonaro, 68, has been politically blurred even though he lost the elections by a narrow margin. In June, judges disqualified him from running for election for eight years, which separates him from the next two presidential contests. The reason is not his management of the pandemic nor the alleged coup incitement, but the abuse of power to delegitimize the electoral system from the head of state. After months in the US, he has not participated in any mass event. His most faithful are calling for mobilizations next week, on the occasion of the anniversary of the violent assault on the headquarters of the Presidency, the Supreme Court and the Congress, in Brasilia. The most ultra-Bolsonarianism trusts that, once Milei's victory in Argentina has been consummated, and a hypothetical electoral victory by Donald Trump will give it new vigor.

In any case, the former Brazilian president also still has a wide range of legal cases open against him, including one in which the Supreme Court is investigating him for encouraging an attempted coup that seemed to be copied from the assault on the Capitol in Washington. The main perpetrators are being sentenced to long prison terms by the Supreme Court. Lula, who two weeks after the riot dismissed the head of the Army, has tried to ease his tense relationship with the military with investments in the Defense industry.

The Lula of 2023 looks very similar to the Lula of 2003, although with two more decades of experience, including his time in prison. Back at the Planalto palace, he has reformulated, updated and relaunched the programs, fulfilling his promise two decades ago to include the poor in the budget. The anti-poverty aid from Bolsa Familia, the amount of which Bolsonaro increased spectacularly during the pandemic and Lula has maintained, is essential for millions of families to live with dignity, the difference with the previous mandate is that to collect them it is once again mandatory to vaccinate one's children. and make sure they go to school; For the first time in five years, the minimum wage has increased more than inflation. The Government launched a mammoth public investment program worth 320 billion euros to reactivate economic activity and the fees to encourage university entry for the poorest and Afro-Brazilians have been expanded.

The most symbolic moment of the enormous popular party into which Lula turned his inauguration, on January 1, 2023, was when he climbed the ramp of the presidential palace accompanied by his wife, Janja, and a handful of Brazilian citizens belonging to groups underrepresented in political power, such as women, black people, the poor, indigenous people or the disabled.

Although he began his mandate boasting that a third of the Cabinet were ministers, he has dispensed with three of them to make way for men from parties whose votes are crucial to moving forward with his legislative agenda. A disappointment for the feminist movements and the most progressive Brazil, that she carried out an impressive public pressure campaign for President Lula to appoint a black woman for one of the two Supreme Court vacancies that he has appointed. In both cases he has placed men of his utmost confidence, the lawyer who freed him from jail and his Minister of Justice.

In the chapter of joys, the economy. The GDP will close 2023 with a growth of around 3%, four times more than predicted when Lula took the reins. Unemployment is the lowest in almost a decade and inflation continues to moderate. Lula's surprising bet of placing his most faithful collaborator, the gray and potential successor Fernando Haddad, of the PT, as a strong man in the economy, is now considered successful. He and his team have managed to get Congress to approve simplifying the baroque tax system and finally introducing a VAT, which will be around 27%. For 2024, there remains the titanic task of addressing the mother of the lamb, the income tax reform. Another of Lula's great efforts for next year is to expand the support program for the renegotiation of domestic and business debts, which are suffocating a good part of his compatriots.

The Brazilian left has recovered from the trauma of the dismissal via impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, whom her mentor has also rehabilitated by sending her to Shanghai as president of the BRICS bank. Lula wants to take advantage of the presidency of the G20, which she now holds, so that Brazil can recover the shine of yesteryear.

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