Analysis: Mistakes threaten to make Lula a precocious lame duck – 06/01/2023 – Politics

For a politician praised in his circle as one of the most astute for decades, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva lives in a peculiar situation.

Allies, opponents and friends of the occasion are unanimous in questioning the wisdom applied to the PT’s course of action in his third term, obtained under exceptional conditions that required intensive work to bear fruit in subsequent support.

The near dismantling of the ministry, blackmail that took on the air of probability on Wednesday afternoon (31), was just the most acute symptom of a sum of errors that can only be attributed to the reverse of what was expected of Lula in the circles of power.

With just six months in office, Lula is facing the toughest start to the government since the second term of successor Dilma Rousseff (PT), with worse performance. She risks, and not a few moderate observers point this out, becoming a precocious lame duck.

As is known, the expression imported from American politics designates presidents at the end of their term or severely deprived of their effective power. They can be decorative figures, like Michel Temer (MDB ) in the final year of his administration, dangerous ones, like Donald Trump in the US, or a mix of both, like Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in his death throes.

Obviously, Lula didn’t get there and has a lot of game ahead of him, but he is openly flirting with the condition. Nothing explains the lack of effort to negotiate a peaceful approval of the provisional measure that redesigned the Esplanada precisely to include the neo-allies that should guarantee it governability.

This costs money, of course, and the allocation of space, things that the PT usually likes to keep to itself. But Lula, presumably, is smart enough to know that withholding concessions would get him into trouble.

Leaks throughout Wednesday that the PT would not meet with Arthur Lira (PP-AL) so as not to show the otherwise inevitable genuflection only served to irritate the powerful president of the Chamber, who declared war on the political articulation of the Planalto at the end of the day.

Afterwards, Lira made it known to the government that, in the House he presides over, projects of interest to the government will only pass if the game is rearranged — and he has already taken back a good part of the budgetary power lost with the nominal end of the rapporteur’s amendments, the famous secret budget .

Whether or not this will cost the Ministry of Health for the former centrão, after Lula has supported a new consortium centered on the PSD-MDB-Republicans, remains to be seen. But the climate of reruns in the cinema of Brasilia is great.

Again in Lula’s account is the fact that this was a time bomb announced months ago. The recent defeats, with the evisceration of Marina Silva’s portfolio (Environment) at the head, only showed that the manual of the 2000s had lost its validity: Congress will not follow the Planalto.

Just as the 2019 Social Security reform was the work of a Congress in tune with the economic elite, its financing, the government’s great victory so far, the approval of the fiscal framework, served an interest of Parliament.

The Federal Police operation against Lira’s allies will not help. It’s one of those coincidences that no politician believes they are, and we don’t go into the merits here. In the field of symbols, the action will be read as a message to the deputy who, from past experience, seems to need a much larger caliber of ammunition to feel hit.

All the credit that Lula gained with the 8/1 had already been exhausted, and the promises of a government of national unity that were already empty in the PT’s inauguration speech proved to be just that. The president was unable to galvanize the support network that the ministry’s assembly implied, and everything indicates that he was the victim of arrogance.

There are also examples of crooked training, demonstrated by the fact that Lula managed to alienate both agribusiness and the MST, or in episodes such as the case of popular cars or the proliferation of CPIs.

Added to this is the destruction of another capital, that of external prestige. Lula was still seen abroad as a hero of democracy, and the transition of government had decisive support from the United States. Point for point, he’s throwing away everything he had for free.

His initially good proposal on the Ukraine war turned into a whirlwind of back-and-forth, the natural courtship of China became a platform for outright anti-Americanism, the desirable normalization in Latin America derailed in praise of the Venezuelan dictatorship.

In this last item, the mistake is twofold, as it gives gas to Bolsonarism’s ideological nonsense. Even journalists were beaten by security guards at the Itamaraty. Finally, the perception that the Amazon was a priority only in speech, a side effect of the lack of articulation in Congress, will also take its toll in international forums.

Lula can still turn the tide, of course, if he seeks to focus on the economy — the surprising performance of the GDP, courtesy of the trampled agro, added to the generalized good will in the congressional hosts and in Faria Lima with a more rational agenda, provides the conditions for this.

It is uncertain whether he will promote a change like in 2005-2006, when he emerged from the ashes of the monthly allowance as an unbeatable candidate for re-election amidst the Chinese commodity cycle. Brazil and the world are much more complex today, and such a national union could ultimately be imposed from the outside, by actors with very specific agendas for 2026.