The third Lula: neither revenge nor amnesty

Installed the new progressive Brazilian government led for the third time by the leftist Lula da Silva, who will replace the extreme right-wing Bolsonaro coup, is considering what to do with those who were responsible for the serious crisis, even institutional, to which the country was subjected .

And, in this regard, two key words have resonated in Lula's various speeches.

The first statements in the speeches of the new head of state are summarized in the rejection of "revenge and amnesty."

Lula has framed these realities with complete clarity.

Nothing of useless revenge, since what the country needs is a new spirit of national reconciliation after having emerged solomonically divided by the crisis of Bolsonaro's government.

But if there will be no revenge that further darkens the climate of schism within the country, there will be no amnesty for the "crimes" committed in these four years.

All its protagonists will have to give an account before the courts, although "with the right to legitimate defense within due legal process."

This is important because what was being considered by the Bolsonaro losers was the granting of a pardon to former President Jair Bolsonaro who now, for the first time in his entire political life, is left without any position that would grant him the so-called "parliamentary impunity."

The Bolsonaro government had tried to pass a law in Congress that would grant, for the first time, former presidents the position of senator for life, which would give him a shield against possible judicial convictions.

They did not succeed and today Bolsonaro is just one more citizen who must answer for his possible crimes.

Although without citing his name, Lula branded the former president as "genocidal" for the victims of the covid pandemic, with one of the highest death tolls in the world, according to an investigation carried out by the Senate for six months.

It was made clear in that investigation that Bolsonaro not only boycotted the use of vaccines but even mocked, imitating those who died of suffocation in hospitals due to lack of oxygen.

Lula has been blunt: "The responsibilities for this genocide must be investigated and cannot go unpunished," he said, raising his voice in his speech in Congress.

And when it comes to Bolsonaro's bravado against democracy in the four years he spent threatening a military coup, Lula was blunt: "The mandate we received in the face of adversaries inspired by fascism will be defended with the powers that be." that the Constitution confers on democracy”.

And he added: "We will respond to hate with love, to lies with the truth, to terror and violence with the law and its harshest consequences."

That is going to be the program of the new government in which for the first time, the largest party on the left, the Workers' Party (PT), comes to power hand in hand with comrades from parties in the center and not even on the right. coup, something that became essential to defeat the new fascism that had been installed.

In many decades, a new government comes to power in Brazil after four years of scorched earth, with such high rates of poverty and even hungry people, and above all with such a divided and poisoned society.

Hence, the new Lula government will not have it so easy since it will have to face an opposition this time not simply from the right but from a dictatorial nature that has spent four years threatening an institutional coup.

It will now be necessary to see and analyze day by day how the defeated and humiliated opposition intends to behave at the polls.

It will be necessary to see if Bolsonaro, who for the moment has infuriated his own by fleeing to the United States and has been branded a coward, will stay out of Brazil for fear of being tried and imprisoned for his alleged crimes or will try to retake the reins of the opposition to the new government.

According to political analysts, all this will also depend on how the new government puts into practice or not, and already, without waiting a day, its promises not only of national reconciliation but also of restoring to the country the possibilities of economic growth that it already had in mind. the past and to rescue from misery the 30 million who barely have enough to eat.

Lula will have to forget this time that his government belongs only to the PT, his party, even though it monopolizes the most important ministries.

He will have to understand that he is made up of a broad arc of democratic forces willing to put a dam against the threat of institutional rupture that until days ago threatened the country.

A danger that remains latent despite the natural euphoria of the renewal that the new government brings in its backpack after the darkness into which the destructive barrage of Bolsonaro had plunged it, which had isolated from the world the power that Brazil represents in American continent.

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