Twelve years have passed since Lula’s departure. Since then, the left has not been able to produce any other leader than the charismatic trade unionist who became president, now 77 years old. This is one of the lessons of the narrow victory (50.9%) of the founder of the Workers’ Party (PT), Sunday, October 30, which, by the way, completes the “pink wave” in Latin America.
From now on, the main democracies – Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia – are tinted with the same color. And we can rejoice in the end of Jair Bolsonaro, former army captain and baroque president, who transformed one of the most popular countries in the world into a planetary pariah. This, by brutalizing the Amazon, by militarizing politics, by ignoring the Covid (toll of 700,000 dead) or even by multiplying the insulting remarks vis-à-vis the Macron couple.
But the return of Lula should not make us forget that his first two mandates (2003-2010) corresponded to the “Odebrecht affair” (Brazilian construction company), that is to say the largest system of political corruption. never taken to the scale of the continent. Nor that the governance of the PT resulted in the flight of a large part of the popular vote and the middle class to Bolsonaro. More recently, Lula demonetized himself abroad with a staggering outing – which delighted Putin – to the address of the Ukrainian president: “Zelensky, you are a good humorist, but we are not going to support a war so that you can give you a show.” Lula remains a myth whose voice carries. But he is not a saint.
Axel Gyldén
Opinions
The Time.news of Christophe Donner
Chronic
The Time.news of Christophe Donner
Chronic
