From Brasília
Towards a government of national salvation that includes popular forces united with the non-fascist right. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva advances in the construction of a broad alliance for the purpose of overcoming October elections and guarantee governability in a possible third presidential term in which it will be necessary to rebuild a country devastated during the administration of Jair Bolsonaro, Who will seek his re-election?
It is in that context that The former president greeted this Sunday the Movement of Landless Workers (MST) in the celebration of its 38th anniversary. “I congratulate the MST for its fight for a better Brazil, so that today and tomorrow thousands of families have a place to live, work and grow healthy food for the Brazilian people.”
The message was sent a few days after the coordinator of the MST, Joao Paulo Rodrigues, expressed his respect for the conservative, GEraldo Alckmin, possible vice-presidential candidate in the ticket headed by Lula, from the Workers’ Party (PT).
Alckmin He was governor of São Paulo and candidate for the presidency in 2006 and 2018 for the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB).
The endorsement of Alckmin’s candidacy given by the important landless leader Rodrigues, quoted in the newspaper San Pablo leaf, had repercussions on the left where that possible nomination was the subject of some questioning. Among those who frown on Alckmin are Guilherme Boulos, leader of the Homeless Workers Movement (MTST) and member of the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) and Rui Falcao, former president of the PT.
surveys
Surveys published between last Tuesday and Friday coincided in locating Lula as favorite with a wide advantage over Bolsonaro. Moreover, recent polls as well as those conducted at the end of December project an eventual victory in the first round on October 2 without the need to go to the ballottage on October 30. Something that would be unprecedented given that all the PT’s victories, in 2002 and 2006 with Lula as well as 2010 and 2014 with Dilma Rousseff, were achieved in second rounds.
With great support from public opinion, Lula does not need to have a deputy to add votes to him, but rather someone capable of broadening the coalition with which to return to the Planalto Palace for a third term. It is a historic challenge for someone who last descended the ramp of the presidential palace on January 1, 2011 with an eighty percent popularity rating.
Although the candidacies have not yet been formalized, Lula has left little room for doubt that the former São Paulo governor will be his running mate.
“Do we have different world views with Alckmin? Yes, we do, but that does not prevent us from putting the differences in a corner to be able to govern. I will not have any problem if I had to make a formula with Alckmin to govern this country. Winning the elections is more easier than governing and governing means talking to people, that’s why we need alliances,” said the former mechanical turner last Wednesday during a press conference with independent media without the presence of the dominant journalistic groups.
Alckmin, recently disaffiliated from the PSDB and for now without a party, maintains fluid dialogue with sectors of the bourgeoisie that are phobic towards the PT and is capable of persuading factions of the right that, in addition to being disillusioned with Bolsonaro, understood that if he were re-elected he could implement something resembling a dictatorship.
The newspaper Economic value, not at all sympathetic to the PT, wrote that after Lula’s nod towards Alckmin, the São Paulo Stock Exchange rose and the dollar fell. And the portal O Antagnoista, which also does not agree with the left, revealed that Bolsonaro almost attacked an adviser when he was informed about another poll that gave him as a loser in October.
without triumphalism
Giving Lulista victory as possible is reasonable, considering it certain could be politically reckless. For this reason, the PT recommends its militancy avoid falling into a triumphalism that leads it to consider that Lula has already guaranteed its return to the Planalto Palace and lower its guard prematurely.
A realistic reading of the political scenario in this post-democratic Brazil indicates that the remaining eight months until the elections could be a minefield of Bolsonarist operations aimed at sowing instability.
It is enough to review what happened in the first twenty-one days of this year: While Lula was establishing himself in the polls, the former captain resumed the threats against judges of the Federal Supreme Court and he insulted the opposition again through a speech similar to the one used in September when he launched a strategy with the expectation of carrying out a coup.
If Bolsonaro abandoned his attacks on institutions for a few months, this was due to the failure of the September coup plot – when his fascist rallies drew fewer people than expected – but not because he converted to the democratic creed.
Although sectors of the press try to sweeten the ruler, the truth is that He never gave up recreating in Brazil a crisis similar to the one mounted by Donald Trump on January 6 of last year when far-right hordes stormed the Capitol of Washington alleging electoral fraud in favor of Democrat Joe Biden.
In those days of cold North American January, Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, was in the US capital where he met and photographed with Ivanka Trump. The daughter and adviser of the former Republican president was invited to testify in the US parliamentary committee where the events of January 2021 in which deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro may have had some degree of complicity are being investigated, according to the Brazilian portal Congreso en Foco.
Congressman Bolsonaro, a man of weight within the Bolsonaro Clan and a friend of publicist Steve Bannon, promoter of an extremist international alliance, claimed not to have been involved in the invasion of Congress, although he claimed responsibility for it, in addition to suggesting on several occasions that something similar could happen. in Brazil if a “fraud” is perpetrated in favor of Lula next October.
Never, or almost never, does Eduardo Bolsonaro speak without his father’s permission.