President Lula da Silva has just been sworn in and this Sunday he received a huge share of realism about the “terrifying” country, as he himself called it, which he received from his predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazil is broken into two parts, as evidenced by the October elections which consecrated the leader of the PT with a minimum difference of 1.8% of the votes.

But there is an extremist and anti-democratic minority which feeds on that crack and which has advanced into frenzied territory, a condition which does not take away the extraordinary gravity of his movements.

It was nonsense, in fact, the armed camps in front of the military barracks calling for a military coup because they did not agree with the election result.

Or because they bought the equally absurd version that Bolsonaro made about an alleged fraud, which did not exist to the point that Lula’s victory was immediately recognized by the armed forces, by the Justice and by the governors themselves allied with the outgoing president.

When Lula triumphed in the ballot, it is worth remembering that the truck drivers, a union linked to Bolsonarism, practically blocked all routes in the country, especially in the south, demanding new elections or a military intervention that would bring the former president back to power.

It was a combination of show of force and threat to the future. The idea that things will be like this.

The resistance that does not turn off

In any case, there was some confidence in the new government that this resistance would quickly subside. This week, after Lula was sworn in on January 1 of his third presidential term, the fields in front of the barracks, one of the largest in Brasilia, began to break up.

Largely due to the disgust of these fanatics at Bolsonaro’s flight to the United States before Lula took office. That is why this Sunday’s violent demonstration surprised the government, the press and politics in general.

That was not an option, in any case, front-line officials of the new government told this reporter, confident that their power would never again be challenged, at least not in these ways.

The versions Those who met this Sunday in the Brazilian capital argued that this type of attack bears the mark of the system of harassment promoted by ultranationalists such as the American Steve Bannon, a close ally of Donald Trump and adviser to Bolsonaro and his sons legislators.

That dangerous individual was behind the assault on the Capitol on January 6 two years ago, a coup attempt by the New York tycoon to prevent Joe Biden from being inaugurated as president. Similarities. Lula’s complaint the suspicious attitude of the security forces of Brasilia to prevent these episodes, go in the sense that there is something more than spontaneous anger.

Polarization

It is not clear whether Bolsonaro promoted the episodes against the seat of constitutional powers in Brasilia, but he furiously fomented the polarization of the country; He defended the coup plotters as democrats and before leaving the country to avoid handing over the presidential sash to his successor, a politically rude gesture like that of Trump with Biden or Cristina Kirchner with Mauricio Macri, he once again hammered the suspicions of a stolen election, on the trail of the unproved denunciation of the US ultra-Republican leader. Bolsonaro has never acknowledged his rival’s victory.

Lula will surely neutralize the madness that has rocked the country this Sunday. There is no possibility of a coup in Brazil. And there is no doubt that, contrary to what his enemies suppose, this furious coup will strengthen it.

But, in political terms, the episode demonstrates that it will cost much more to rebuild the institutional and civil limits that must not be violated.

It is a much more complex country than I imagined. The federal intervention now in Brasilia, just a few days after the government is reached, is a sign of the extent of those challenges. Lula knows that those who promote these attacks are not trying to overthrow the government, but to condition it.

In this labyrinth and with these backgrounds, Lula must solve two central and strongly connected economic bombs: the social one, which leads to widespread poverty, and the fiscal one, which heralds inevitable abysses in public finances.

When the new president starts trying to correct those deviations it will have to expose a large part of its political capital. That game will feed his opponents and on the street he will shoot all kinds of leads.

Proof of how difficult it was to dominate this monster came after taking office, when the fledgling government decided to extend fuel tax exemptions, a tax loss irresponsibly generated by Bolsonaro. It was clear that if he did the opposite, i.e. the right thing, inflation would rise due to the increase in the price of petrol and those truck drivers would once again try to kidnap Brazil.