Lula and the center – 04/15/2023 – Celso Rocha de Barros

At least among opinion makers, there seem to be many centrists disappointed in Lula. Even if they support debolsonarization and a good part of Fernando Haddad’s agenda, the centrists seem to have difficulty in embracing the Lula government as “theirs”.

To some extent this was inevitable. It is a government with a broad front, which will not entirely satisfy any of the various ideological visions that compose it. But the left, at least, has the president and the final say in deadlocks.

For centrists, it remains to apply some of their favorite ideas, such as tax reform, and rebuilding the things that Bolsonaro destroyed.

It seems little to justify a complete adhesion that, in the calculation of some centrists, could dissolve the social-liberal field in the orbit of PTism. After all, many people who voted for Lula just to defeat Bolsonaro in 2022 want a more centrist alternative in 2026.

Some of the criticisms from the field, let’s say, post-toucan make little sense. For example, Lula withdrew several companies from the privatization program. PT has always been against privatizations, although it accepts public-private partnerships. A PT government that continued privatization would not be approaching the center, it would be applying the Tucano program in its entirety. That’s not a reasonable claim.

Other criticisms are better founded. The center is right to criticize the complacency of left-wing authoritarian regimes. Before anyone says that we shouldn’t get involved in the problems of Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, I remind you that no one complained when all the great democracies in the world opposed Bolsonaro’s coup.

The center does not like the government’s left-wing rhetoric about the economy, including Lula’s fight with Roberto Campos Neto. None of this has had much practical consequence so far: the rhetoric appears to be an attempt to maintain the government’s left-wing identity. After all, the left is also afraid of dissolving on the broad front. But it is entirely understandable that if the government marks its identity in this way, the center feels excluded. Identities matter.

As far as the fiscal rule is concerned, I think the critics are wrong. It’s not that his accounts, which point to difficulties in achieving the goals that the government has set for itself without increasing revenue, are wrong: it’s just that it’s not easy to find an area of ​​government where big cuts in spending are possible.

I can’t imagine how any party that had won in 2022 could now propose a very large spending cut. It goes for Tebet, for Ciro, and it just doesn’t go for the crazy Novo party because, if he had won the election, Novo would apologize for the misunderstanding and hand the presidential sash back to Jair.

Lula’s relationship with the center is still under construction and should have moments of closer proximity, such as the tax reform debate. By now, the reader should know that I am advocating a stable alliance between the left and at least part of what we call “the center.”

But, if they prefer to distance themselves as 2026 approaches —which is also legitimate—, Lula and the center have an obligation to organize this process without jeopardizing post-Bolsonaro reconstruction or the approval of the broad front program.

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