Lula da Silva, whose renowned political nose learned to recognize good but also evil, you must be worried. Although the party and the candidate clearly prevailed in Sunday’s elections, the result resonated little and what was worse, failure.
This vision arises not so much from the expectation of a sensational victory that was not there and to which both the party and its main figure had embraced, also driven by the failed and partial action of the polls. There was and persists something more disturbing.
Legislative power – where President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party has been strengthened to convincing levels, controlling the top two minorities – is heralded as a wall which, if the PT actually wins, can at least conspire to generate a weak and unstable government, without full maneuverability.
This notion is what conditions and reduces in a distressing way the shares of value to what could happen in the ballot of October 30th. The heterogeneous alliance with a little left and a lot of center and center right that the PT has put together is not wrong, hence the 5% difference in favor at the polls. But it was insufficient.
The party’s corruption story still weighs on the middle-class electorate referred to calls for consistent self-criticism from the former president. And very strong signals, even these still pending, on how he will deal with his management.
Very difficult second round
Lula heads to the second round much more difficult than expected. It needs to establish itself with a big difference. An achievement that allowed him to flex political muscle would increase his chances of doing so limit the power of damage of your opponent who will have significant influence from the opposition. That is, if Bolsonaro does not end up taking the victory.
Here the uncertainty about the results is as intense as the disbelief in the polls. Many analysts, including supporters of the former president, speculate that the ballot will indicate a minimal difference between the two contenders.
The biggest challenge for Lula, therefore. it is not limited only to trying to win, but to what size and to what political costs, of agreements and assignments, in the fabric of alliances.
Furthermore, the former president must understand that even by realizing on October 30 what he did not achieve this Sunday, there is an agenda that fell apart and it must be rebuilt with other, more moderate and realistic levels of ambition.
There are other threats flying overhead. Abstention has not stopped growing in Brazil where voting is mandatory: this time it exceeded 21 percent, a figure the highest in 24 years. There are 30 million people who don’t vote.
This defect no longer involves the illiterate and the very uninformed as in the past. Those are sectors today they have lost faith in politics and in the system itself, widespread problem in the region.
To make matters worse, Decisive Election Sunday strikes right in the middle of a long vacation that includes civil servants’ day on Tuesday, so that there will be four days of bridge. In Brasilia there will be five.
A nice test for a gentrified PT and pot-bellied who has lost the rhythm of militancy to get his people out of their homes and, above all, without one argument for rebellion but another for pacification. The ruling party finds this panorama optimal, you need fewer people to vote, you benefit from absenteeism.
Parliament and Court
The weaknesses of the next government, if it remains in Lula’s hands, will be measured in the eventual inability to advance in central management instances such as the dismantling of the secret chapter of the budget controlled by the legislator. In that hidden passage there is a fiscal abyss. There are only suspicions about its depth.
This exaggerated centrality of Congress in Brazil was built on the weakness of the PT’s Dilma Rousseff governments, that of its Vice President Michel Temer who helped to bring it down and that of Bolsonaro, who starts strong, but also loses energy and substance.
The battle for the budget will be the first test, the initial fight when the next government will start if Lula leads it, to assess with what power it will begin to walk and What will you be willing to negotiate?
Congress is a hill to conquer, but only for the former metal trade unionist. Bolsonaro has no comparable difficulties there. To understand the difficult conclusion of the legislature, the body had no qualms about promoting over two dozen constitutional amendments a few months before the elections.
He did so by taking advantage of the crack that leaves him the president’s never-ending struggle with the Supreme Court which greatly limits the movement of judges.
In notorious excess, lawmakers have even sought to privilege themselves with the right to a license to hold ambassadorial posts. “This is prohibited by the Constitution and by the rules of balance between powers since the beginning of the last century”, this chronicler scandalized. surviving diplomat of the prestigious Itamaraty Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A very strong institutional structure is needed to rearrange that power and restore the normality of the system of checks and balances. The other test is the management of public spending, which has a legal ceiling in Brazil that is constantly violated by the Legislature and the Executive Power and which the PT leader intends reform, although not completely removed.
This operation requires careful attention to what will undoubtedly happen, which will be the immediate request for help from the sectors most affected by the crisis. Here, as in the rest of the region, there will be no patience with a new government, only urgent demands.
It is unclear how Bolsonaro would square that circle if he were to deal with it. According to the final election numbers, the only certainty is that the president of the Liberal Party will pass the PT as the main political force in the Senate and also in the lower house with 112 banks, 23 more than its main rival.
It is true that this volume is not sufficient to impose laws without independent support, but just block the wheel of the Executive and force all kinds of negotiations. It is for all this that it is not clear, and perhaps unlikely, that Bolsonaro will play the game of denouncing and rejecting the result of the last call if the polls do not help him.
It should not, however, be ruled out. say those who know best these palace intrigues.
“Here the question of the interrogation of electronic ballot boxes is not over, it is just waiting”, they commented in the Supreme Court. Bolsonaro would have taken those attacks as a propaganda tool to incite Lula. But if he meekly agreed to run for the second round, that’s why he has secured a portion of power that could be expanded and perhaps because he believes he can be re-elected.
He reckons that if he fails to pass the ballot, he will still be very close to the winner in limiting his movements, particularly the PT’s attempts to lock him up in his own judicial problems. Among other opacities, the scandals for the cash purchase of fifty houses that also involve their children. Those complaints will go down in history.
Justice is a complex chapter. Next year the Senate decides two additions to the Supreme Court (Federal Superior Court) for the withdrawal of as many judges. Advances in that House will allow Bolsonarism to influence those selections.
First, the president appointed two more magistrates. And he has always entertained the idea, as in Argentina, of expanding the Court from his the current 11 members to 15, with the far-right leader’s Liberal Party shifting its relative power to try to name the new four.
The Court would lose all independence. Nothing to be surprised about. Let’s not forget that Bolsonaro is populist and populists are alike, no matter if they come from the right or it suits him to feel left. They are not Republicans I am illiberal according to a correct fashion term which perfectly describe the Brazilian president.
All these maneuvers, and with the new parliamentary composition, have raised the alert among the highest judges on the possibility now more than before of a new escalation of political trials against the courtiers.
Analysts here are divided on whether or not Bolsonaro will be able to carry out that offensive. While not all new congressional benches have the profile to undertake this kind of confrontational agenda, this Sunday’s result shows that Bolsonaro would, in a possible second term, an easier way out of these maneuvers. But he would not have succumbed to the opposition either.
This would begin with the search for the election of a more docile Senate president than Rodrigo Pacheco, who never allowed these types of agendas to advance. Among these, the request for a political trial that Bolsonaro insistently asked Alexandre de Moraes, the supreme judge who oversees the transparency of the elections.
Brasília. Special delivery
Source: Clarin
