The day has finally come. Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, legendary PT leader and former metalworker unionist, takes office this afternoon at 3pm. for the third time the presidency of the second largest economy in the hemisphere.
The act of inauguration, in which he will address the country, should focus more than 300 thousand people on the Esplanade two ministries that the new ruler will greet on his way from Brasilia’s extraordinary cathedral designed by Oscar Niemeyer to the Planalto Palace, the seat of government.
Everything will be very different however, at earlier ceremonies, including two in the first decade of the century in which Lula himself was the star. This time there will be a huge security operation as a reaction to the emergence of terrorist activity by far-right groups who are admirers of former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Since the elections that the new president won by a minimum of 1.8% difference in the second round in October, camps have been scattered across the country in front of military barracks armed by fanatical militants demanding a blow that prevents the recruitment of Da Silva.
A week ago the police managed to disable a huge terrorist attack consisting of an explosive charge placed in a tanker bound for the airport of this capital.
Bulletproof vest and armored car
This background motivated the heads of the security system to point this out to Lula wear a bulletproof vest during the ceremony and to travel in an armored car and not the Rolls Royce convertible which has historically been used in these acts.
Another serious peculiarity is that Bolsonaro, the far-right populist leader who left for the United States on Thursday, will not be present. He did it after an intervention on the networks in which he reiterated his theory of him with no evidence that there was any some kind of maneuver in the elections against him, the argument of his most fanatical supporters.
In that message, in which she sobbed, defended the coup camps but, at least, he questioned the attempted attack. It is the first time that an outgoing president has not handed over the presidential sash to his successor, an anti-democratic contempt reproduced outside Brazil by Donald Trump with Joe Biden in 2020 and before that by Cristina Kirchner with Mauricio Macri.
It is not clear whether that symbolic post will be taken on by the outgoing vice president, retired general Hamilton Mourão, who won a senatorial seat in October and is aiming to form a right-wing block against Lula. The official had clarified that his executive tenure as vice president ended on Saturday evening, so he will only be a legislator this Sunday.
The event will be attended by opposition leaders, in which Janja, Lula’s wife, had a strong organizational presence. also from Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party, governors and a legion of more than 170 foreign dignitaries, half of them heads of government.
The United States has sent its interior minister and China its vice president. Since when Argentina President Alberto Fernández arrives in the morning and will return to Buenos Aires in the evening.
The challenges
Lula comes to this instance with the urgency of resolve the enormous polarization in the country, which was practically divided into two sectors of similar size, and improve economic and social indicators.
As soon as he takes office, he will be in the pressure target of the parties that have divided up the Legislative, here central for governance, and of the demands of the middle and petty bourgeoisie that multiply their expectations.
Brazil, under the management of Bolsonaro, has returned to the United Nations list of countries with famine situations, a serious drift that affects about 33 million people with daily difficulties in obtaining food. Above this destitution, there are about 20 million families in poverty.
Lula da Silva, who will govern with a Congress strongly dominated by right-wing parties, has managed to negotiate an extension of the legal ceiling on public spending, to have in the first year of government another nearly $30 billionan even higher figure if others are included, sufficient to finance the subsidy programs that allow that social bomb to be extinguished.
It was a central step, since as most economists here homogeneously point out, Brazil starts on January 1st a difficult periodwhere the fiscal abyss left by the Bolsonaro government will impose a series of adjustment measures.
Lula will replenish the taxes that the outgoing president withdrew to improve their electoral image. It also tries to keep inflation at its current low levels of around 6% a year and even reduce it to meet the targets set by the central bank.
Bolsonaro and his economy minister, monetarist Paulo Guedes, have managed to control the cost of living even with electoral criteria, artificially force the drop in fuel prices. According to economic analysts, this bias cannot be maintained.
Lula, in this sense, formed a cheap equipment with counterweights. He has chosen a hard-core PT politician, Fernando Haddad, as minister for the area, but has placed alongside him in Industry and Planning, the conservative senator Simone Tebet, the vice president Geraldo Alckmin, liberal entrepreneur and manager. . His ministry is strategic because it intervenes above all in the application of the budget and in the structure of public expenditure.
This design has sought to put a limit on its hawks, and allow for a balance in the measures, which according to the president’s allies are signs of a government that will be even more pragmatic than the previous two with attention to the national and international situation.
This time there won’t be the momentum with which Da Silva managed to lead his country in the first decade of the century From 14th to 6th by economic size All over the world.
At 77, the PT player will step up the ramp at the now more pragmatic Palácio do Planalto and demand quick results from the squad. The president, the newspaper said on Sunday State, he will return to work in the office on the third floor of the building.
“However, you must reinvent an image that goes beyond the figure of a migrant from the Northeast, a metal worker or even “Lulinha, peace and love”, as highlighted in the 2003 marketing.
The other challenges are delivering on the promise of improve the situation in the Amazon, the world lung mistreated by the outgoing government. As soon as he won the elections, Lula presented himself in Egypt at the climate conference to answer this global question, which also serves as a toll for his country to emerge from an evident isolation that has worsened in the last four years.
In this sense, his Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira signaled to this envoy Lula the strong interest in promoting a dialogue in a rA region facing all kinds of crises and threats to the republican system.
After the coup attempt in Peru, in which Da Silva sided with the new authorities («President Pedro Castillo was licensed by law”, he said at the time), to other worrying distortions such as the contempt in Argentina of a sentence of the Court or the arrest in Bolivia of a governor who ignored his privileges.
Lula, unlike Bolsonaro, has a public approval of the Biden government which considers Brazil, in terms of size and influence, the natural leader in the region to coordinate with. Washington has just appointed an ambassador to Brasilia, a post that has been vacant for almost two years.
He also sent a high-level delegation to this capital weeks ago, led by security adviser Jae Sullivan and other hemispheric officials to expressly invite Lula to the White Houseeven before hiring.
This project was analysed, but could not be implemented due to problems in the agenda. Lula da Silva’s first international trip It will be next January 24 in Argentina.
It is tradition that the new president of Brazil arrives in our country as a gesture of historical recognition of the bilateral partnership. This time the president will participate in the CELAC summit in Buenos Aires, an organization together with UNASUR that the new governor intends to recover as a discussion forum to resolve precisely those institutional imbalances.
BRASILIA. SPECIAL DELIVERY
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.