Lula da Silva, President of Brazil, during a press conference with Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor.Arthur Menescal (Bloomberg)
Since Lula won the elections three months ago, and in his first month in office, he has shown that he has come to defeat and detoxify the country from the Bolsonaro virus.
In less than three weeks, he had three indisputable victories: he recovered the international relations that with Bolsonaro had turned Brazil into a corner of the province;
he reestablished peace with the Armed Forces, who saw his arrival with bad eyes and uncovered in the open the genocide and holocaust of the indigenous people of the Amazon.
Now Lula, with the elections in progress in Congress and the Senate, is playing the last fundamental card to be able to undertake his great and last battle: that of the economy, to implement his promises to rescue the misery in which the government of far right had thrown millions of families.
Lula's great stumbling block was the presidency of a Congress, without which he could not govern, and which is more reactionary than ever and with the certain victory of the current president, the convinced Bolsonaro member, Arthur Lira.
There, Lula's political sense prevailed that he decided to support the conservatives and enemies of his government so as not to stay on the street.
It is more difficult with the Senate where the Bolsonaro supporters, even with Bolsonaro's telephone support from the United States, are fighting to elect the far-right, Rogelio Marinho.
If Lula loses the Senate, where fundamental decisions for governments and justice are forged, his task will not be easy.
Lula has already experienced in his two previous governments how without Congress one does not govern.
This is how the PT in its first government had to materially buy the parties, which led to the scandal that led to its leaders being imprisoned.
In his second term, Lula ran into the same problem again, with a Parliament in a minority and it was there that the new scandal arose that gave rise to the
Lava Jato
operation and ended up dragging him to jail.
Perhaps because of all this, there is no little curiosity to see how Lula, in his third term, will be able to govern again with a Congress that is even more hostile to him than ever, especially since this time he will no longer be able to use the methods of the past. try to buy the deputies to whom it has nothing to offer.
To all this is added that this time, Lula has confronted the most radical wing of his party, the PT, by allying with forces outside the left, which has forced him to share government power with people considered not his.
Lula also knows that he won the elections but not by plebiscite but by a handful of votes, which indicates that almost half of the country is still suspicious and is what has caused Congress to be occupied mainly by the Bolsonaro extreme right.
This time, not only the country's democratic forces but also the outside world have their eyes set on Brazil to see if in the end Lula's political sagacity will be able to prevail over the pitfalls that he will encounter on his way.
Lula has supported in Congress a clear follower of Bolsonaro who has the overwhelming majority of deputies, aware that against him his government would have been paralyzed and would not have been able to pass a single law.
Not to mention that given the danger of an impeachment petition, the current president of Congress already has the votes in hand to get it approved.
Despite all these pitfalls, Lula reveals himself to be strong and capable of fighting.
Given her success and her ability to avoid so many obstacles, if he ended up winning, she would be assured in 2026 or her own re-election despite her advanced age or that of a faithful squire.
Lula's audacity is that this time he is not only forced to fight against a tough ideological enemy like that of the extreme right-wing Bolsonaro, but he has to stop, at the same time, the conflicts within his party since it is the first time that he will be minority in government.
What Lula will have to do, from now on, with the emaciated left, is to prepare new young leaders who can continue to keep alive tomorrow, against the uncouth right-wing Bolsonarism, a social democracy capable of taking the pulse of the millions of Brazilians who still they will continue swimming in oblivion and misery.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS America
newsletter
and receive all the latest news from the region
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I'm already a subscriber