Power Rift In Brasília: How Lula Lost His Grip On Congress And The Streets Began To Shift

Brazil’s political capital is on edge again. The once-stable alliance between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the leadership of Congress is unraveling, exposing deeper cracks in the way power really works in Latin America’s largest democracy.

The rupture began when Lula bypassed Senate president Davi Alcolumbre to name his own attorney-general, Jorge Messias, to the Supreme Court.

Alcolumbre, who had championed another candidate, took the move as a personal slight. Within days, he warned that the government would “learn what it means not to have the Senate president as an ally.”

Since then, he has revived a series of costly spending bills, described in Brasília as fiscal “bombs,” that could force the Treasury to release billions in parliamentary funds ahead of the 2026 election year.

At the same time, Alcolumbre faces a political storm over Banco Master, a mid-size lender recently liquidated after a Federal Police investigation into fraud.

Public pension funds from several states lost nearly R$2 billion ($370 million), including R$400 million ($74 million) from Amapá, where one of his allies leads the state fund.

Brasília Power Struggles Signal a Shifting Political Tide

The scandal has drawn attention to how political figures quietly influence where civil servants’ money is invested — a problem that long predates the current government but rarely sees daylight.

Meanwhile, in the Chamber of Deputies, Speaker Hugo Motta has fallen out with Lula’s party after pushing through a hard-line “anti-faction” bill to fight organized crime.

His choice of São Paulo’s security chief, an ally of popular conservative governor Tarcísio de Freitas, as rapporteur infuriated the ruling party.

The two sides are also clashing over the bill that could reduce penalties — or grant amnesty — to those jailed for the January 8, 2023 riot in Brasília.

Behind these fights lies a more revealing story: Brazil’s political center, once loyal to Lula’s left-leaning coalition, is now recalculating.

Many lawmakers sense that public opinion — tired of corruption, crime, and heavy spending — is drifting away from the government’s ideals. What looks like another Brasília power struggle may, in truth, be the first visible shift of the country’s political tide.