Criticism of Temer shows Lula haunted by impeachment – 01/26/2023 – Politics

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) won a vital political victory for his third term in office after the coup tragedy that befell Brasilia on January 8th.

As is common in Brazilian presidentialism, in which everything leads to the chair of the occupant of the Planalto, the PT galvanized around him the response to the vandalism of Bolsonarists who vandalized the headquarters of the Powers.

Almost three weeks have passed, and an investigation and punishment machine unparalleled in recent history is in operation. Politically, however, with the resumption of work in Congress next week, the tendency is for Lula’s political credit to begin to wane.

This partly explains the gratuitous attack made on the government of Michel Temer (MDB) on Lula’s trip to Uruguay on Wednesday (25), when he described the management of the emedebista as a coup, putting it in the same basket as that of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) by repeating the theme of the cursed inheritance, used by practically every ruler when taking office.

It was not the first time. In the second round, he also said that Dilma Rousseff (PT) had suffered a coup in her impeachment in 2016. Corollary, then vice-president Temer and his subsequent government would be coup plotters.

Returning to the theme, Lula extends the designation to the entire period after the impeachment, seeking a bridge with Bolsonaro’s coup d’état and even the insanity of the January 8 gang. It is a new variant of the “us against them” that has always guided PT political discourse — before, “they” were “the elites”; now the suggestion is that every naysayer is a potential scammer.

In doing so, Lula also reveals a certain reverential fear of impeachment, even if that is nowhere near on the horizon. After all, it is the instrument that has haunted any Brazilian president since Fernando Collor fell in 1992, due to the ease with which it is invoked.

Lula’s reasoning is logical: to maximize the credit he gained in handling the crisis. The real impact of this remains to be seen, given that Temer’s response, suggesting that the president work without looking in the rearview mirror, is exactly what a good part of the political class privately says.

Nobody, at this moment, will go public against Lula – with the obvious exception of the most faithful Bolsonaristas. The president still embodies, as well as Supreme Minister Alexandre de Moraes, the institutional reaction to the barbarism that was presented to us in the Brazilian Capitol.

But it is a matter of decorum, merchandise with a very low shelf life in Brasilia. The dissatisfactions with the resourcefulness of Lula and some of her ministers in this phase of temporary empowerment are already audible.

Finally, there are two side factors. The impeachment, unlike what the president says today, was a legal process overseen by the Federal Supreme Court.

Obviously, the impediments are political acts. Dilma’s fiscal pedaling was a crime, but she only fell because of the economic ruin she created, because of the pressure on the streets and because of the lack of political support in Congress — the ultimate reason for the fall of presidents of any party color, as the right-wing Collor shows.

Thus, Lula takes advantage of the current moment to promote a kind of amnesty for the ally, to whom he was not so empathetic in the past. Dilma attends ceremonies at the Planalto Palace and her government is now part of what Lula called an “auspicious moment” in the PT’s management. “Tempus fugit”, as the Roman poet Virgílio would say in Latin so much to Temer’s liking, “time flies”.

A second point is more commonplace. To trample Temer is to strengthen his supporters in the MDB, such as Renan Calheiros (AL) and Jader Barbalho (PA), both with their children in the lulist ministry, and even the independent Simone Tebet (Planejamento), who was a candidate for the Planalto for the party against her will of the former president.