100 days of Lula: Democratic engine and minorities are progress – 09/04/2023 – Politics

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) received the presidential sash, one hundred days ago, from the hands of Raoni, a nonagenarian chief, a ten-year-old child, a garbage collector, a teacher, an artisan, a metallurgist, a cook and a influencer of the anti-capacitist struggle.

Jair Bolsonaro’s (PL) refusal to hand over the position to him was read, at the time, as an opportunity to wave to overcome the dark times for minorities and Brazilian democracy itself.

Experts and activists operating in the democratic field are unanimous in saying that the worst is behind us. Not that it was a Herculean task, having as a predecessor a rival who, in the campaign, synthesized in a speech much of what he thinks about the subject: “Damn it… Where are we going? Giving in to minorities… The laws exist, in the as I see it, to protect the majorities. The minorities have to adapt”.

But, if the comparison with Bolsonaro leaves the petista well in the picture, charges for inaction, more space and inconsistency also appeared in his third incarnation in Planalto.

It also makes noise Lula defending democracy in Brazil while being at least lenient with dictatorships of old comrades on the left, from Venezuela to Nicaragua.

To start the conversation, it is necessary to consider that the previous administration “brought up democracy and the minimum conventions of civility”, says USP professor of constitutional law Conrado Hübner Mendes, columnist for Sheet.

Bolsonaro, according to Conrado, left a boneless State and demanded that institutions take a side, such as the Armed Forces and police. He reversed institutional values ​​by putting someone who discredited racism at the head of the body destined to combat it, a climate denier at the Ministry of the Environment, a military man and later a doctor who minimized the pandemic in Health.

“They were years in which teachers, journalists and civil society were treated as enemies of a political project of stultification.” It fell to Lula at this start, he says, “to try to restart the democratic engine”.

The petista has taken “enormous steps” so far, he says, but he needs to avoid stumbling. “The government will have the attribution of making three major appointments this year: two to the Federal Supreme Court and one to the Attorney General’s Office. car wash X anti car wash’.”

UFMG political science professor Cristiano Rodrigues equates the government with what the MDB led in the Constituent Assembly, after the military dictatorship was buried. They are similar roles: “Pave the way so that we can once again strengthen institutions”.

“Brazilian democracy reached a point close to breaking between the election and January 8”, says Leonardo Avritzer, his colleague in political science at the university of Minas Gerais. It happened when Bolsonaro did not admit electoral defeat, when his PL tried in vain to go to court to annul votes, in the various anti-democratic acts and, as a grand finale, the attacks in Brasília a week after Lula took office.

Points for Lula here, says Rodrigues. First, because he seeks greater and better dialogue between the three Powers, after four years of fighting between the Judiciary and Bolsonaro, who even called STF Minister Alexandre de Moraes, who later took over the presidency of the Superior Electoral Court, a scoundrel.

Second, because, under his government, the press and public opinion have more space for “debates that go beyond ‘is there going to be a coup or not'”.

And discussions came in various areas such as gender and race. Lula broke the record by announcing 11 women on the Esplanada —Bolsonaro began his government with two. But 11 is not even a third of the ministries, critics and allies alike recalled. The same with the presence of blacks, short of the desired equality.

The president is now being urged to diversify an almost all-white and male STF. But he has already indicated a predilection for his lawyer Cristiano Zanin, a white man, in the next vacancy.

Professor at USP and president of Radiobrás in the first Lula administration, Eugênio Bucci points out “good signs, but still vague ones”, in the area of ​​communication.

He praises “the clear commitment to combat misinformation, the return of civilized contact with the press and a project of republican organization by the EBC”, the state media, “the stage of rampant authoritarian propaganda” under the Bolsonarist yoke.

Clarity is still lacking, however. “We are well aware that the same vagueness is observed in other areas. In the environment sector, for example, there is no inspection installed to deal with deforestation. This delay is understandable, since the public machine is still in shambles.”

Bucci proposes that the Presidency resume an official spokesperson, “which would free the President from having to give too many statements on all subjects and then some.” If granting regular interviews is essential, so is avoiding provocative speech, he says. “If you go there, you lose your essential condition as a serene referee.”

One of Lula’s most poorly evaluated slips, even among allies, involves Sergio Moro, who as a judge framed him in Lava Jato, later became a Bolsonarist minister and today is a senator for União Brasil-PR.

The petista said in March that, when he was arrested, he set himself the goal of “fucking that Moro”. He added fuel to the fire by suggesting days later that the PCC’s plan to attack the former magistrate, revealed by the Federal Police, was “a frame” by the former magistrate. fake news.

“If there is persistence in ‘resuscitating’ Moro, the government can be seen as revanchist”, says Rodrigues, from UFMG.

Representatives of minorities converge in saying that with Lula they are light years away from the Bolsonarist hustle, although they cover more budget and representation.

A president left who went so far as to say that a quilombola was no longer suitable “not even for a breeder”, another came in who appointed Anielle Franco, sister of the murdered councilwoman Marielle, to the portfolio of Racial Equality.

Lula also edited a decree for blacks to occupy at least 30% of positions of trust in the government and overturned a measure by Bolsonaro that barred official tribute to living blacks, such as Gilberto Gil. He also revoked the 2022 decree that made it difficult to recognize quilombos in Brazil.

“We will be tireless until all black families can have the right to the land, its memory, its sacred and its future”, says Anielle.

Activists, however, want more representation in the highest spheres of power. As in the Supreme Court.

The underfunding of portfolios aimed at minorities, experts point out, was already a problem in past PT administrations and is now repeating itself.

President of the LGBTQIA+ National Alliance, Toni Reis celebrates the recreation of a federal council for the countryside. “The empathy has returned.” Renato Viterbo, vice president of the LGBT+ Pride Parade, sees the government’s willingness, but talks about “resolving the problem of lack of employees” in bodies that care for diversity.

Valtin Parakanã, an indigenous leader, says that “Lula is doing a lot of good things for us”, like creating the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples and having one of them head Funai. But it’s still “not 100%”, he points out. “Our land continues to be invaded by prospectors, land grabbers.”

Another sphere dissatisfied with the Bolsonaro years celebrated Brazil’s return to the UN’s Global Migration Pact, abandoned in 2019, a measure that horrified those who defend immigrants and refugees. “A hallmark of that government was ‘passing the cattle’, issuing ordinances and decrees to distort the existing legal framework”, says Camila Asano, executive director of the NGO Conectas Human Rights.

Bolsonaro thus opened the door to summary deportation and selective closure of the border, all in disagreement with the laws in force, he says.

Lula inherited a queue of asylum requests, also a reflection of international turmoil. In 2010, at the end of the second term, 619 people requested asylum in the country. In 2022, there were more than 40 thousand.

Coordinator of Migrations and Refuge of the Public Defender of the Union, João Chaves points to the end of the “dangerous inertia” of before. He sees, however, two challenges for Lula: replacing the “emergency bias” of the Acolhida Operation, which supports Venezuelans, with “lasting solutions” and improving the issuance of visas abroad for those at risk, such as Haitians and Afghans.

Depoliticizing the Armed Forces is ‘even utopia’, say experts

It will not be overnight that Lula will resolve years of attrition with the military, animosity nurtured with care by Bolsonarism. Experts say that depoliticizing the Armed Forces is a long-term project. “Even a utopia,” says political scientist Ana Penido, a researcher at the International Security and Defense Study Group at Unicamp.

In the first hundred days of his new mandate, the petista lived a bite-and-blow with the category. There were many measures that stretched the rope with the uniforms, such as the recent one to ask Congress to withdraw a bill to exempt military and police officers from punishment if they commit excesses during operations to guarantee law and order (GLO). A campaign promise made in 2018 by Jair Bolsonaro.

The government was not even a month old when Lula dismissed the then army commander, General Júlio Cesar de Arruda, in the midst of an open crisis of confidence after the anti-democratic attacks in Brasília on January 8th. He left him for General Tomás Paiva.

Four days after the depredation, the president declared that the Armed Forces are not “a moderating power as they think they are” and exposed the conviction that the police and military let the coup demonstrators invade the Planalto Palace.

“These are large, traditional and conservative institutions”, says Penido. “Lula invested in the demilitarization of the government, which is already a great challenge, given the previous situation.”

It has been successful in some areas, such as the environment and the indigenous, according to the military specialist. In others, such as intelligence or defense policy, the work has just begun. “He has in his hands the opportunity to convene a national defense conference, like other public policies. In the face of the political-military catastrophe of the previous government, patience and boldness will be needed. “, she says.

For Adriana Marques, a UFRJ professor specializing in the area of ​​defense, it is necessary to take into account that “the government starts from a very bad level”, far from what Lula’s first two terms were. “We are emerging from a situation of democratic erosion a decade ago.”

Bolsonaro equipped the State with the military in an unprecedented way since redemocratization, and depoliticizing the Forces is a real challenge, according to Marques. She prefers not to talk about “pacification”, because “the relationship must be one of subordination to the democratically elected regime, the Forces do not have to have an opinion about the regime”.