Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva, president of Brazil from 2002 to 2010, went on a triumphant tour of Europe in November. It was an opportunity to gather the support of the European left, of all tendencies, and refine his speech as a candidate for the presidential elections to be held in October 2022. His strategy to unseat Jair Bolsonaro is based both on his extraordinary personality and in his ability to negotiate with the kings of politics.
For José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a former Spanish socialist leader, “‘Lula’ is a master in reducing inequality.” “I am delighted to have seen you again, dear ‘Lula’, you represent hope for Brazil,” added François Hollande on November 17, 2021 to welcome the former Brazilian president to Paris.
From the European Parliament in Brussels to Madrid, passing through Berlin and Paris, ‘Lula’, authorized by the Supreme Court of Brazil in April 2021, offered a European tour worthy of a head of state. Speeches, conferences, interviews, hugs, smiles and thanks punctuated an overloaded schedule.
In the halls of a large Parisian hotel, where he went to receive the Prize for Political Valor awarded by the magazine ‘Politique Internationale’, the 76-year-old former president seems to have the energy and determination of a thirty-year-old, as he likes to say when he they ask about his age.
Smiling reunion between Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Lula on November 17 in Paris.
AFP – CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULTRelaxed in reassuring statesman outfit
Are you a candidate in the 2022 presidential elections to face Jair Bolsonaro? “I’ll let you know in February or March,” he responds calmly. Are you mad at the press for dragging you through the mud? “In Brazil, there is a part of the press that does not try to inform, but to make the candidate it has chosen get elected. It is an industry of lies,” he responds as calm as ever.
The former worker, who regained his freedom in November 2019, is also himself when he declares his love for the Brazilian people: “good, democratic, generous, hard-working and much better than the ignorant who currently govern it”, or when he defends the Brazil’s vocation to become an economic and regional power for the good of the planet. The look is mischievous, the phrases are sharp and the charm works on the dozens of businessmen, politicians and journalists who have come to listen and see him.
A few hours later, he was received for lunch at the Elysee Palace by French President Emmanuel Macron with the pomp of the Republic. The endless judicial sequence that began in 2011 and that saw ‘Lula’ convicted in several cases of corruption, embezzlement of public funds and obstruction of Justice seems to have ended. For Gaspard Estrada, director of Sciences Po’s Political Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean (Opalc), the former Brazilian president is “back in the Champions League of international leaders.”
A proven electoral strategy
With this tour, ‘Lula’ showed that he is not an outcast in the eyes of the international community, unlike Jair Bolsonaro. This is an essential element in their eyes to recover the hearts of Brazilians and build their victory in the October 2022 elections.
Back in Brazil, and before a new trip to the United States planned for the next few weeks, the former president will continue the electoral strategy that smiled at him so much when he became president of Brazil in 2002: speak with the whole world, negotiate and bring together political forces beyond the Workers’ Party (PT), its formation, especially in the center of the political spectrum.
“‘Lula’ has no competition on the left, but after Dilma Rousseff’s ‘impeachment’ (in 2016), the PT turned to its left. In the 2018 presidential elections, its candidate chose a running mate who was more to the left than him. But historically, the PT only wins with a formula that proposes a vice president who comes from the center-right, “says Oliver Stuenkel, professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in Sao Paulo.
During his two terms, ‘Lula’ had as vice president an evangelical businessman, José Alencar, “who helped bring together certain sectors of society that were not in his favor,” adds Armelle Enders, a contemporary Brazilian historian at the University of Paris-8.
The inescapable ‘Centrao’, the soft and corrupt part of Brazilian politics
To govern Brazil, all the presidents since the return to democracy in 1985 have had to ally themselves with a multitude of small, rather conservative parties that, in Brasilia, act as spokesmen for “deep” Brazil, the one that defends the carrying of arms, puts Above all, the Bible works at the service of agribusiness (23.5% of GDP and 44% of exports from the leading Latin American economy in 2018, according to official data).
Divided into a multitude of acronyms (25 parties have elected members in Congress) and called by the Brazilians ‘Centrao’ (“great center”) these formations make rain and good weather. “You cannot govern Brazil without the ‘Centrao’, its members will always be in the government and they do not care who wins the elections.” It is a peculiarity of the Brazilian political system, “says Oliver Stuenkel.
For this reason, it is probable that ‘Lula’ wants to “return to the happy times of his presidency and end political polarization”, returning to “lulism”, synonymous with “conciliation, acceptance of the realities of Brazilian political life, that is to say , the politics of barter, when support is exchanged for material benefits, regardless of any political ideology “, according to Armelle Enders.
“On the left, he has also been criticized for having personal ties with many personalities on the right or in the center who are considered unattractive,” adds the historian. But in 2022 this same left-wing party is likely not to be so fussy, since what is at stake in the election is nothing less than removing Captain Jair Bolsonaro from the Presidency for good.
Reconnect with the Army?
Another of the challenges of the great conciliator is to reconnect with the military institution, very popular among Brazilians and that turned to Jair Bolsonaro after his victory in 2018. “Lula tried to initiate a dialogue with the military hierarchy through his former Minister of Defense , Nelson Jobim, but apparently without success. The creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by Dilma Rousseff in 2014 has created a rupture between the PT and the Army, which restricts the dialogue with the institution or the military police “explains Oliver Stuenkel.
In Paris ‘Lula’ was unusually uncompromising on this issue. “The role of the Brazilian armed forces is very well defined by the Constitution: they defend the sovereignty of our country. (…) They are at the service of civil society. That is what our Constitution says. Currently, there are 8,000 military in positions of responsibility and civilian trust. They will have to leave and we will replace them with non-military people. There is no problem, but I do not want to talk about elections with the military, “he told reporters on November 17.
Under the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, the image of the Army has been tarnished by its catastrophic management of the Covid-19 crisis, when Bolsonaro briefly entrusted the Ministry of Health to a military man, General Pazuello. Furthermore, it would not be surprising if some senior officers did not oppose negotiations with ‘Lula’, who, during his two terms, displayed unerring nationalism, especially when it came to purchasing arms for the armed forces.
Who can disturb the announced duel between Bolsonaro and ‘Lula’?
In a Brazil hard hit by unemployment and the health crisis, while hunger has re-emerged in some regions of the country, ‘Lula’, who has led all polls for months, wants to focus his candidacy on reconciliation, on the celebration of Brazil and in the tranquility of the population. And yet, it is effectively an ultra-polarized duel between the former president and Jair Bolsonaro.
Other personalities try to disturb this announced confrontation. We can mention Judge Sergio Moro, who sent ‘Lula’ to jail in 2018, a few months before the presidential elections, before becoming the Minister of Justice for the current Brazilian president. Or the ‘Toucan’ Joao Doria, a billionaire businessman who became governor of the wealthy state of Sao Paulo in 2019.
While many Brazilians are interested in a “third way” out of the extreme political polarization in which the country has been immersed since 2015, Oliver Stuenkel believes that “‘Lula’ hopes to face Bolsonaro in the second round and Bolsonaro hopes to face Lula “. That is why they are not really attacking each other at the moment.
For Armelle Enders, “it will be very difficult for ‘Lula’ to attract entrepreneurs again. In 20 years, many things have changed. A new right, very libertarian, has gained strength. It seeks a third way, between a ‘Lula “Too leftist and too unpredictable a Bolsonaro. He could resort to the candidacy of Judge Moro, which could embarrass Bolsonaro.
The unknowns of decisive elections
A victory for ‘Lula’, expected by many Brazilians and also by many leaders of Europe and Latin America, is not an inevitable conclusion. In fact, although the former president has been acquitted of the sentences that made him sleep for 579 days in a Curitiba prison, his name continues to be synonymous, for a part of Brazilian public opinion, with the corruption of the political elites.
Jair Bolsonaro owes much of his election to the violent rejection that Lula’s Workers Party (which ruled Brazil uninterruptedly between 2003 and 2016) provoked in different sectors of the population, from the rich to some circles of the working class, as well as in the press.
“Currently, Jair Bolsonaro keeps a low profile because he was threatened with impeachment when he tried to stage a coup in September. But he is not buried, anything is possible,” says Armelle Enders. In case of defeat in the second round, the current Brazilian president, a great admirer of Donald Trump, does not plan to leave power without a fight, especially if his winner is called ‘Lula’.
In Paris, to a journalist who asked him what he would do if he was defeated by Jair Bolsonaro in the second round of the presidential elections, the old warrior widened his eyes before answering “then I will only have to cry!”
* This article was adapted from its original in French.
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