In one hour, President Lula da Silva suspended Bolsonaro’s privatizations, promoted civil disarmament, raised fuel taxes, raised the ministries from 22 to 37, and annulled the former president’s “Schools without Parties” reform.
Unlike the right-wing, which when it comes to power seeks consensus and legal certainty for each and every one of its political actions, the brand new President Lula da Silva wasted no time and just one hour after taking office he signed 10 decrees in a pull suspending practically all the reforms that Bolsonaro promoted in his 4 years in office.
The first to sign was to annul the policy of flexibility for the acquisition of weapons by the civilian population, which Bolsonaro implemented to promote civilian arms and reduce crime.
In another decree, he overturned the authorization for the opening of shooting clubs until further notice and reduced from 6 to 3 the number of weapons that a civilian can have in his house.
In the third decree, he annulled the tax cut on fuels, which Bolsoanro had arranged as a measure to reduce the impact of the rise in international prices of a barrel of oil due to the war in Ukraine.
In a fourth decree, Lula da Silva canceled the Auxílio Brasil social assistance that Bolsonaro had created and reinstated the so-called Bolsa Família that he popularized in his government.
Although it has the same amount of R$600, Lula da Silva’s social plan is delivered first to social movements, who then take charge of distributing it among the people, with all the corruption that this entails. Bolsonaro’s aid had to be sought directly by people in federal government offices.
In another decree he raised the number of ministries from 22 to 37, the largest number recorded in the history of Brazilian governments. This he was able to do after a massive increase in public spending that Congress approved a few weeks before assuming the presidency.
In the sixth decree, perhaps the most important of all that he signed, Lula da Silva annulled all the privatizations that Bolsonaro had pending to date. These include the oil giant Petrobras, the postal service Correios and the massive Brazilian Communications Company (EBC), which controls telecommunications and the entire public media network in the country.
Two other of the decrees that he signed are related to education. In the first, he annulled one of the pillars of the Bolsonaro government: a norm that prohibited educational indoctrination in schools throughout the country.
And in an eighth decree on this same subject, and perhaps the most controversial, Lula da Silva suspended a Bolsonaro rule that allowed the creation of special schools for students with disabilities.
In another decree he re-established the Amazon Fund, an international donation box commanded by Norway and Germany to take care of the Amazon Rainforest. Bolsonaro had closed it because it had been the focus of corruption and embezzlement during the previous PT governments.
Finally, the tenth decree that President Lula da Silva signed in the first hour at the Planalto Palace eliminated the regulations that allowed the creation of confidential documents for 100 years, which had been issued by Bolsonaro on various issues, including his vaccination book and visits to the Planalto Palace and the Alvorada Palace (official residence).
Bolsonaro had had to resort to this measure to avoid political persecution from the Supreme Court. In the “Fake News” case, Judge Alexandre de Moraes had tried to force Bolsonaro to say if he had been vaccinated against Covid and if he had met with businessmen that he arrested for creating “falsenews” against the Judiciary.
With information from La Derecha Diario