Lula’s return to Brasilia worries Bolsonaro …

From Brasilia

Lula hovers around the Planalto Palace again. Backed by polls that make him a favorite for next year’s presidential election, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva landed on Monday in a Brasilia that was eagerly awaiting him. This is his first trip to the capital since the Federal Supreme Court delivered justice (not always) by restoring his political rights after canceling the proceedings against him in the context of the Lava Jato trial ordered between 2014 and 2018 by then-judge Sergio Moro.

If São Paulo is the economic engine of the country, Brasilia is where the power lives: no one with political aspirations can be far from this city. ren eight years, between 2003 and 2010, those of his two presidential terms, Lula was the strong man of Brasilia.

On January 1, 2011, he left the capital after having descended the ramp of the Planalto Palace with eighty percent popularity, after having been the architect of the victory of his heiress Dilma Rousseff.

From this Tuesday and for several days, the former president will hold meetings with lawmakers, diplomats and politicians near the “glass house” where President Jair Bolsonaro has been dispatching for two years and five months.

His presence in Brasilia changes a political landscape previously dominated by neo-fascists, military politicians and conservatives endowed with a finite sense of location (read opportunists).

“The most popular leader of Brazil”

In its state of “most popular leader in Brazilian history, Lula has already established himself as the great civilizing pole of the country, capable of modifying the quality of the national political debate and pointing to a defeat of Bolsonaro in the elections of 2022 ”, declares the former minister and former senator Aloizio Mercadante, head of the ideas reservoir of the Workers’ Party (PT), of the Perseu Abramo institute.

“The restoration of Lula’s political rights was a great aspiration of democratic and progressive forces, his return was an extraordinary novelty amid the coronavirus pandemic, recession and unemployment,” says Mercadante in dialogue with Page I12.

Commission of Inquiry into the Genocide

On the PT chief’s agenda, which has yet to be confirmed, are possible meetings with senators who, from this Tuesday, will begin investigating former officials of the Ministry of Health. in the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (ICC) on the pandemic.

No one escapes the fact that the veteran extornero will analyze with lawmakers the strategy to be pursued by a body that will meet over the next three months during which the government will be laid bare.. Their responsibilities in the 407,000 deaths and more than 14.7 million infected with covid-19 will be investigated.

If the actions of the opposition are effective, this ICC could be the prelude to a possible indictment against Bolsonaro, repeating the saga of 1992 when Fernando Collor de Mello was forced to resign from the presidency after an ICC that shed light on his irregularities.

Since Lula returned to the ring, with his political rights and the possibility of being a candidate, the former captain-president shows signs of concern. He has made many decisions thinking about a rival he fears and surely would not have defeated in the 2018 election.

It is thanks to the Federal Supreme Court, the army and then Judge Moro (the list does not end there) that the mechanical extornero persecuted by the dictatorship was banned from these elections 20 | 8 in which an apologist for the de facto regime was imposed.

In a show of force last Saturday Bolsonaro flew over central Brasilia aboard a military helicopter, including the Planalto and Congress, a gesture of thanks to some 4,500 fans urging him to carry out a military coup. A message for Lula?

Should Lula’s landing in Brasilia be seen as the start of the campaign towards a third presidential term?

Aloizio Mercadante declares that the election is secondary in this trip.

“Lula does not prioritize the October 2022 elections at the moment, now his great concern, are the millions of Brazilians who are daily faced with the dilemma between starving because they have no minimum income or risking contracting covid-19 if they go to work. “

Since Bolsonaro stopped paying the 600 reais (about $ 110) subsidy paid last year, unemployment has risen to 14.4 percent, affecting 14.4 million workers, to which are added some 117 million. citizens facing food problems. Brazil has returned to the world hunger map from which it emerged during the PT administrations.

“Lula’s departure to Brasilia is part of his efforts to ensure that there are more vaccines for the Brazilian people and for the government to once again provide emergency aid of 600 reais to all Brazilians in situation. poverty and social vulnerability, ”added.

The lack of vaccines and the late start of vaccination are a consequence of the Cold War logic with which the government assumed the pandemic.

From the outset, the former captain refused to start talks with China and Russia, as part of his secondment to the posts of his North American colleague Donald Trump.

With the arrival of Joe Biden at the White House, Bolsonaro threatened to moderate his position in the face of the pandemic, even leaving open the possibility of being vaccinated, which he had sworn a year ago never to do.

Despite these apparent changes, the truth is that the government persists in bickering against Beijing and Moscow. Last week, Economy Minister Pinochetista Paulo Guedes accused China of “inventing” the virus and the drug regulatory agency, commanded by Admiral Antonio Barra Torres, postponed for the umpteenth once the approval of the emergency use of the Sputnik V.

Faced with this diplomatic vacuum Lula will occupy part of his stay in Brasilia in “meetings with ambassadors and political leaders in search of more vaccines for the Brazilian people”, anticipates Mercadante.

It is not excluded that he has meetings with the ambassadors of Russia and China. It also appeared that he could meet a European diplomat. If these meetings are confirmed, Lula will have had a typical agenda of a head of state, leaving something that everyone knows in black and white: the diplomatic isolation of Bolsonaro.