Without ‘new Lula’, left faces challenge of renewal – 10/15/2023 – Power

In January 2011, when he held the General Secretariat of the Presidency, Gilberto Carvalho said that the opposition should not get excited if the recently inaugurated Dilma Rousseff (PT) government faced problems, as the party had an ace up its sleeve for the following election. .

“Pelé on the bench”, he stated, referring to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), who had just left the Palácio do Planalto after two consecutive terms and a historic record of 83% positive evaluation, according to Datafolha .

Twelve years later, it was up to Lula himself to revive the idea. After having spent the 2022 campaign denying the possibility of running for re-election, the president declared in February this year that he could run in the face of, in his words, “a delicate situation”.

But there was no need to wait to get to that point. PT resolution released on August 30 defended, without ambiguity, that the party should look to the 2024 municipal elections with a view to the renewal of the Lula government in 2026.

Fruit of the PT’s electoral strength, the two situations also illustrate the other side of this coin: the difficulty for the left to find an alternative to its most successful politician in Brazil.

“Lula and the PT seem to have a much better performance than other parties or other leaders [de esquerda]but Lula’s leadership is dated by his own age, and the PT will have problems once Lula is not the main political character”, says political scientist Leonardo Avritzer.

The PT bench in the Chamber of Deputies is the largest among left-wing parties since 1994; Lula, in turn, was the presidential candidate with the most votes from the left in all the disputes he participated in since 1989, always with a higher percentage than his own party.

For Avritzer, who is a professor at UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais), leaders and, mainly, alternative or complementary left-wing political parties to the PT have not yet been established; Only strong names emerged at the regional, not national, level.

He cites as examples Senator Jaques Wagner and Minister Rui Costa (Casa Civil), who governed Bahia; Elmano de Freitas and minister Camilo Santana (Education), current and former governor of Ceará respectively; and Minister Wellington Dias (Social Development), former governor of Piauí.

All those mentioned are from PT. Avritzer notes that, in 2018, under the effect of Operation Lava Jato, other left-wing parties occupied the vacuum caused by anti-PTism, such as the PSB and PDT. None of them, however, maintained the same level four years later.

According to sociologist Celso Rocha de Barros, corruption scandals still damage the PT’s image, but, at the same time, the Lula and Dilma administrations left positive marks with great electoral impact.

“The social results of the PT governments are a great asset of the Brazilian left. It is fair that the left is well voted for having worked well. The Brazilians who gave the PT victories in 5 of the last 6 presidential elections did so through rational calculation”, he says Barros, who is a columnist for Sheet.

These two images, he says, tend to weaken over time, which creates opportunities and challenges for renewal.

“There is no one in the PT hoping to find a ‘new Lula’. This denotes wisdom on the part of the party. As a political phenomenon, Lula’s leadership emerged from a very specific historical context that will not be repeated”, says Barros.

For him, the PT needs to pay more attention to the debate of ideas, to be less represented by its leaders than by its proposals. In this assessment, smaller left-wing acronyms, such as PSOL and Rede, can contribute to the training of staff.

“This renewal process has to happen quickly: since the 2017 reform, the number of parties has fallen and the political system is consolidating. This began at a time of greatest historical weakness on the left in the New Republic. If this alliance of centrão and Right-wing radicals gain too much of a lead, then it becomes difficult to reverse it”, says Barros.

For this reason, the sociologist sees alliances with sectors of the center as a more frequent feature of the Brazilian left. Leading a broad front to defend and rebuild democracy suggests a possible path forward.

As he indicates in the book “PT, a History” (Cia das Letras), the possibility of the acronym having the same fate as the PMDB after redemocratization and losing its identity cannot be ruled out.

“There are some signs of this: in the nominations for the Federal Supreme Court, for example, the party seems more concerned with surviving in the Brazilian political system than with defending historical flags.”

And those aren’t even the only obstacles ahead. Political scientist Flávia Biroli points out a very adverse context for the left, as a result of changes in the world of work and social relations.

“Unions today have a lesser role in intermediating between institutional policy and the grassroots, the precariousness of work means that ‘every man for himself’ predominates over occupational and class solidarity”, he says.

Professor at UnB (University of Brasília), she considers that the left needs to redefine its relationship with society, clearly communicate a project and take care of the renewal, not only of structures but also of language.

Biroli says that the left, in general, has given space to the growing role of women and to the opening of new agendas, such as the environmental one, always in connection with human rights issues.

In the case of PT, in particular, the consolidated structure hinders this oxygenation. “But the post-Lula and post-2023-26 government depend on this renewal as much as they do on a strong party machine.”

Even if this process is completed satisfactorily, however, there is another underlying issue that complicates life for the left: Brazilian society has shown itself to be more conservative than these parties would like, says political scientist Lara Mesquita.

“The challenge is to meet the demands of the left without generating absolute rejection from center and center-right voters, so that the left can continue winning elections”, says Mesquita, who is a professor at the São Paulo School of Economics at Fundação Getulio Vargas .

It’s not an easy equation to solve. Social agendas, such as combating hunger and reducing poverty, create little objection, but some customary agendas are increasingly dear to the left and less accepted by the right.

Mesquita also cites staff renewal as a challenge, but sees the left ahead of the center in this regard. She talks about PT governors who commanded states in the Northeast, mentions Minister Fernando Haddad (Finance) and mentions Guilherme Boulos, from PSOL.

“Apparently, he will be a very competitive candidate in the São Paulo municipal election, which is an important showcase. And he is doing important work within the PSOL of moving away from the more sectarian wings and building a wider range of alliances”, says the political scientist .