Lula and Bolsonaro’s destinies were sealed by June-13 – 02/06/2023 – Politics

Among the many ironies of the June 2013 Journeys, one involves the two main antagonists of Brazilian politics today.

Both President Lula (PT) and former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) had their trajectories affected by the protests. On the other hand, this happened despite the lackluster performance of the two during that turbulent month in the country’s history.

In 2013, Bolsonaro was still an unexpressive deputy, who stood out only for his extreme and homophobic positions — as in his performance in the case of the so-called gay kit, in 2010.

In June, when protests against the increase in bus fares were already causing clashes with police, he went to the Chamber’s tribune to complain about a column in the newspaper O Globo that called him a troglodyte for something that the then deputy described basically as a neighbor’s fight —in his case, with the Sheraton Hotel, in Rio, because of generators.

“Six months ago, I decided to go radical: every time I walk in front of the hotel, I throw a bunch of firecrackers between the two pillars, to wake up those people,” he said.

On June 19, it was no longer possible to ignore the protests. “My boy, Rio de Janeiro councilor Carlos Bolsonaro signed the CPI that will investigate the city’s bus companies, proving that we have no obscure connection with businessmen, something always suspect in the legislature”, posted the then parliamentarian.

In other publications, Bolsonaro said he was against PEC 37, which limited the powers of the Public Ministry, and against the political reform proposed by Dilma Rousseff (PT), which he said he saw as a path to a “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

At the end of the month, the then parliamentarian returned to his most characteristic agenda, that of customs, with a post contrary to the proposal that, according to him, transformed “homosexuals into demigods”.

At the time, Lula was an incomparably more relevant politician than Bolsonaro.

After leaving the Presidency three years earlier with 83% popularity for his successor, he mentioned the issue of public transport on June 13, without mentioning the protests that were already taking place, at an international meeting of authorities from peripheral cities in Porto Alegre.

He said he expected cities to promote more debates to seek a “solution” for urban mobility and to improve their ways of financing.

It was not the only topic of his speech. Still far from realizing the dimension of the acts that would turn to politicians, Lula defended the expansion of the number of ministries in the Dilma government, under the argument that the portfolios would need some specialization.

“Either the guy goes to Brasilia to discuss tomatoes or he’s going to discuss fish. One goes into the water and the other goes into the land,” he said.

Lula’s Facebook page, in June 2013, mentions social programs under his management and cooperation with the African continent.

Michel Temer (MDB), who after the impeachment would be branded a traitor by the PT, was the target of two posts. One of them reproduces the meeting of the two and the statement by the emedebist, who said he had come to see someone who became his friend.

On June 17, four days after a protest was violently repressed by the PM in São Paulo, with several demonstrators injured, Lula released a note about the acts, stating that the claims were not a matter for the police, but for negotiation.

“Nobody in their right mind can be against manifestations of civil society because democracy is not a pact of silence, but society in movement in search of new conquests”, he says.

“I am sure, if I know Mayor Fernando Haddad well, that he is a man of negotiation. I am sure that, among the demonstrators, most are willing to help build a solution for urban transport.”

In other posts, the PT publicizes links related to Haddad’s management and Dilma’s statements.

The timid approach to the protests that challenged that political class did not go unnoticed by analysts. “Where’s Lula?” was the title of a column by Eliane Cantanhêde published in Sheet at the end of June.

A report in the newspaper said that the PT had complained to supporters about the Dilma government’s strategy to respond to the wave of protests, in particular the idea of ​​convening a Constituent Assembly.

Lula denied that he had criticized the ally.

The PT’s secondary role in the protests does not mean that he was oblivious to 2013. He organized meetings in which he invited youth representatives to come to his institute to explain what was happening.

Among the questions, participants report, wanted to know what they had against their party’s management.

Even so, the June Days did not occupy a central role for the PT, to the point that one of his closest assistants, Clara Ant, mentioned the 2013 protests only once, in the middle of describing a period, in her book “Quatro Decades with Lula” (ed. Autêntica, 2022).

One reason is that there was a fear that Lula would overshadow Dilma, called by critics as a pillar of his, says Marco Antonio Teixeira, a political scientist at FGV (Fundação Getulio Vargas).

Bolsonaro, on the other hand, had no relevance to stand out at the time. Teixeira also points out that the characteristic that the protests gained, of being anti-political and anti-system, helps to explain why no leadership left, which opened space for two characters from traditional politics to occupy that place.

Added to this is the lack of interest of members of the Passe Livre Movement in going to the institutional arena.

Even without protagonism at the time, both Lula and Bolsonaro had their destinies sealed by the protests, according to analysts.

They see the rise of the anti-corruption agenda and the right as the result of a process that began after the demonstrations expanded.

Sociologist Esther Solano assesses that the traditional right (which she considers to be represented by the PSDB at the time) initially managed to capitalize on a feeling of dissatisfaction that aroused, but that the radical right ended up appropriating the yearning for a leader who presented himself as an anti-system —still that he was a representative of the old policy.

As a result, after some time in 2013, the main victim of this process was the traditional right, evaluates Solano, as this field ran out of space to compete with the left represented by Lula.

All in all, perhaps the biggest irony is that protests that began with an agenda more identified with the left field have served as a key to the rise of extremists from the opposite pole.

Among the reasons is the fact that the left in Brazil has turned its back on June, evaluates USP professor Pablo Ortellado. No wonder, years later Lula would hint at external funding for the June protesters, of which there was never any evidence, with the aim of creating conditions to overthrow Dilma.

The petista would end up spending 580 days in prison between 2018 and 2019 after being convicted in Lava Jato, an operation whose visibility and initial popular approval is also seen as one of the effects of the June Days.

With a master’s degree on the June Days, Flávia Pellegrino, coordinator of the Pact for Democracy, believes that 2013 is more a symptom of the changes in society and political life than the cause.

“The new rights are not born there, but it is there that they find opportunities to express themselves against the political system”, he says. In this context, he assesses, Bolsonaro ends up being the person who best personifies for this field the anti-system sentiment that emerged from the protests.