The duel Lula vs. Bolsonaro is still alive

If anyone has thought that former president Jair Bolsonaro has died politically, they may have been wrong.

And this despite the fact that at any moment he could go to jail after having revealed his undisputed role in the preparation of a coup d'état that failed because the Army hesitated to support it.

The curious thing is that the fact that Bolsonaro ends up in jail depends greatly on Lula, since he has the absolute majority in the Supreme Court, which must judge him.

The paradox and the doubt is that no one is able to know if this would not end up favoring the right-wing extremist, turning him into a martyr, or would definitively eliminate him from politics.

It is true that today Bolsonaro is prevented from contesting elections for eight years, but so is the strength of 30% of followers at any cost, as appears in all the polls, prison could even strengthen him.

It is not perhaps that he himself has recalled that Lula, after almost two years in prison, managed to get out and regain her right to contest the presidential elections.

Bolsonaro knows that he has his eyes fixed on the fate of Trump, whose victory would strengthen him and encourage him to continue being the leader of the Brazilian far-right.

Hence the importance of this year's municipal elections ending up being decisive for the 2026 presidential elections, in which everyone already has the positions.

Many defects can be attributed to Lula, but not a lack of political sense of smell, as he is demonstrating, even to a certain astonishment from his own party who wonders why this approach to politicians, right-wing parties and even bolonarists.

The progressive leader knows very well that the municipal elections next October are the prelude to the presidential elections.

And he knows that by then there is still no clear leader capable of defeating a right that, for better or worse, has been strengthened by Bolsonaro's gale.

At this moment, according to the polls, there is no character, outside of Lula, neither on the left nor in the center, capable of winning the presidential elections in Brazil.

Only that Lula will be 81 years old and whether he wants to or not he will need to think about a possible replacement.

And he knows very well that whether or not the right returns to the Government will depend on these municipal elections.

Because?

Very easy.

In the last elections in which the municipal leaders were elected, Lula's party, the PT, had the biggest defeat in its history by failing to elect a mayor in any major city in the country.

Hence, this time Lula is putting his heart and soul into alliances with right-wing and Bolsonaro candidates from the most important cities in the country, those that usually decide the presidential elections, such as São Paulo, Minas Gerais, or Rio de Janeiro.

They are candidates who had been elected supported by Bolsonaro and who, in view of his fall, are already flirting with Lula, although with one foot still placed on a possible recovery of her old ultra leader.

Lula is so convinced that the result of the municipal elections will largely depend on the presidential election that he is giving unprecedented political prominence to his wife, Janja, not only in his trips abroad but also in the campaign for the municipal elections.

For the first time, a first lady is going to have an unprecedented role in an electoral campaign in search of the female vote and to ensure compliance with the rules that force parties to present a quota of candidates designated by law for women.

Until today, the figure of the first lady has been more of a vase in Brazilian politics.

Lula's wife, registered almost as a teenager in Lula's party, begins to appear as a possible successor to him, given the prominence that she has already acquired by appearing independently.

A convinced feminist, undisguised leftist, sociologist, singer and mass entertainer in the same vein as her husband, there are already those who claim that 50% of Lula's decisions are not made without first consulting her.

The fact that seems certain is that in the current campaign, Janja will have an important role acting even outside of her husband's hand, something that uncovers suspicions of a possible apprenticeship for the presidential elections.

Even more so because in the current polls, with Bolsonaro out of combat for now, his wife, the evangelical pastor Michelle, with indisputable personal charisma, appears better qualified than the other possible candidates, even important governors, from the right and the extreme. right.

One day, the political history of Brazil will have to analyze in depth the Lula phenomenon, who always ends up surprising with some of his decisions, but who in the end, in moments of crisis, appears as the only one capable of sniffing out the future of this very country. rich and complex.

It is a country that at this fundamental moment, in the earthquake that shakes the new political and economic balances, no one is able to decipher.

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