April 03, 2021 1:01 pm
Boredom is an unknown word in Brazilian politics. In an unexpected decision, on March 8 Edson Fachin, a Supreme Court judge, overturned the corruption convictions of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as part of the controversial investigation Car wash (car wash), led by judge Sérgio Moro. This decision, which allows Lula to re-enter politics, complicates plans for the re-election of President Jair Bolsonaro and makes it more difficult to form a coalition of center parties to try and defeat him in the 2022 elections. In a recent poll, 50 percent of Brazilians said they would or might vote for Lula. Bolsonaro is in second place with 38 percent. According to the same poll, 56 percent of Brazilians disapprove of Bolsonaro’s actions. The landscape of the elections of 2022 is a déjà-vu of those of 2018: Lula is favored against Bolsonaro. In 2018, Lula’s name did not appear on the ballot papers because a few months before the elections he had been prevented from showing up, and Bolsonaro won thanks to the indignation linked to the investigation Car wash.
Brazil must commit itself to generational change and to restore confidence in democracy to the country. But right now the most urgent thing is to kick Bolsonaro out. The country has been hit by a pandemic that has killed more than 295,000, has a high unemployment rate and is experiencing a political crisis.
Today Lula is the safest bet to defeat Bolsonaro, who is a threat to democracy
Lula and Bolsonaro are two politicians who cannot be compared. Bolsonaro is an authoritarian leader. He had already expressed his contempt for democratic institutions during the election campaign, and proved to be an irresponsible head of state. Due to the lack of a coherent policy against the pandemic, Brazil, which in the past had been a model for mass vaccinations, struggles as contagions and deaths rise. On the contrary, during the Lula years in power (2003 to January 2011) the country experienced an economic golden age. Its social policies have lifted 28 million Brazilians out of poverty. Lula consolidated Brazilian institutions, and his government granted greater autonomy to the judicial system.
We must not be blind to his mistakes: he has shown that even progressive parties, such as his Workers’ Party, have been ruined by corruption. But today Lula is the safest bet to defeat Bolsonaro, who is a threat to democracy. His return to the public scene reminded Brazilians how much nostalgia they had for a reasonable leader. “This country is in chaos because it doesn’t have a government,” Lula said in her first press conference after the supreme court decision. “The country has become impoverished, GDP is falling, wages have fallen, trade has shrunk, food production is becoming unsustainable. And the president doesn’t care, ”he said, unofficially launching his presidential campaign. His speech was so eloquent that Bolsonaro, with about sixty requests for impeachment pending, was revised a few hours later in a new version: wearing the mask, he talked about the vaccination plan and promised an end to the health crisis. after months of declaring against vaccines, masks and restrictive measures.
Bolsonaro’s sudden change seems to indicate a new electoral landscape. And this in itself is already good news. If before the goal was to find a name capable of defeating him, today the president no longer has the guaranteed place in the ballot, almost always inevitable in the Brazilian elections. Bolsonaro certainly has the opportunity to brush up on his old speech: the one against Lula’s Workers’ Party. But the speech that made him win in 2018 is no longer so strong in 2021. The accusations against the operation Car wash, with serious judicial errors and prejudices against Lula, have complicated things. Even politicians from the center have realized that a single candidacy is needed to have a real chance of victory against the right. This is why Lula, despite his shortcomings, is the best alternative to remove the current president from power.
The left, which already had a leadership problem, now has the task of renewing itself. Lula is the strongest name she has produced, and it is also the reason why nothing else blooms in her shadow. If Lula wins the 2022 elections it would be his third presidential term, a less than ideal situation in a country that desperately needs more democracy. Lula himself must learn to step aside to promote the growth of a new generation of politicians to carry his union agenda into the twenty-first century. New leaders will have to address issues such as environmental protection and gender equality. But first of all you have to do the most important thing: kick Jair Bolsonaro out.
(Translation by Francesca Rossetti)
To know
Operation lava jato
- In May 2014, the largest anti-corruption investigation in the country’s history begins in Brazil. The so-called operation lava jato (car wash) was born as a normal investigation into money laundering and gradually comes to unmask a huge round of bribes involving the Brazilian state oil company Petrobras, some construction companies and many political leaders, including the Workers’ Party. (Pt, left) to the government.
- The investigation is led by judge Sérgio Moro, who is welcomed by many Brazilians as a hero of the anti-corruption fight. Anger towards a political class judged to be corrupt spreads throughout the country and many people take to the streets against President Dilma Rousseff (Pt), who in 2016 was dismissed from her post following an impeachment proceeding. Rousseff was never directly convicted in the investigation Car wash.
- In 2019 Moro was appointed minister of justice in the government of President Jair Bolsonaro (far right), but his ethics are questioned by a series of wiretaps according to which the judge would not have been impartial in the investigation that led to the sentence of twelve years of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Pt) for corruption, preventing him from running for election in 2018 (later won by Bolsonaro). Moro resigns from his post as minister in April 2020, accusing Bolsonaro of wanting to interfere politically in justice.
- On March 8, 2021, a judge of the supreme court overturns the sentences of the former president Lula, who therefore regains his political rights and, on paper, can run for the presidential elections of 2022. A few days later, on March 24, the supreme court rules that Moro was not impartial in the judgment that led to Lula’s conviction.
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