The challenges of President-elect Lula da Silva’s government in Brazil

Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will face in his third term in office as of Jan. 1, 2023, the main challenges of pacifying a country divided by political polarization, social demands, and the need to shore up the economic recovery.

The biggest challenge that the president-elect will face is the intense division reflected in the tight result of the second round, where he won by 50.90 percent of the valid votes against 49.10 percent of the current president Jair Bolsonaro, who was seeking reelection.

The electoral campaign was the most tense since the return to democracy, with episodes including violent deaths motivated by political differences and heated tempers widely reflected in social networks.

On Sunday night, after the proclamation of his victory, da Silva affirmed that the time had come to “reestablish peace between families, between the divergent” and that he would govern “for all Brazilians, and not only for those who voted for him”.

For the president-elect, “there are not two Brazilians”.

But that’s the standard phrase for all newly elected presidents and doesn’t mean it will happen.

In addition to alleviating the country, it will be challenging to deal with Bolsonarismo, the country’s only rapidly growing grassroots movement.

Despite Jair Bolsonaro being defeated at the polls, this movement represents a very active political force, mainly in social networks, which promises to continue in the political arena as a potent force.

Governing will therefore be anything but a walk in the park for Lula da Silva. We expect it to be da Silva’s most difficult presidency.

One of the most problematic aspects is the close ties of the security forces and part of the military with President Bolsonaro’s project. The president-elect will have to initiate a dialogue with these sectors and smooth out differences.

In the first round, many of the most representative politicians of the right-wing linked to Bolsonaro, some of them former ministers, were elected to parliamentary seats, from which they led the opposition to the new Government.

The coalition Brazil of Hope, the Workers’ Party (PT), the Green Party (PV, center left), and the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB) elected 80 deputies out of a total of 513 that make up the Chamber.

LULA DA SILVA WILL FACE FIERCE OPPOSITION IN CONGRESS

Lula da Silva (PT, left) faces an opposition majority in the National Congress.

The Liberal Party (PL, right), to which the current Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, joined in 2021, obtained the majority of representatives in the National Congress of Brazil: 13 of the 81 seats in the Federal Senate and 99 of the 513 seats in the Chamber of Deputies.

For this reason, the future Government will have to negotiate with the parties of the so-called Centrão, a partisan group with no defined ideological orientation, which usually acts according to the advantages it can obtain in its negotiations with the Executive.

In other words, Centrão can be bought, a game Lula da Silva is mastering to perfection as he has shown many times in the past,

Da Silva will have to define decisive aspects of economic policy inherited from the conservative governments that preceded him, particularly the ceiling on the increase in public spending and the labor reform approved in 2017, both questioned by the president-elect during his campaign.

On the other hand, the electoral victory was the result of the support of the most disadvantaged classes, so the president-elect bets that, precisely, the improvement of workers’ income and the strengthening of the domestic market will promote sustained economic reactivation, as in his first two terms in office, in 2003-2010.

In a phase of recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflict in Ukraine, the economy is the primary concern of working families, who are indebted at the highest level in many years.

The new Government will also have to rebuild ties in the international area, first to explore the potential of economic agreements with countries and economic blocs.

During the Bolsonaro Administration, several conflicts with traditionally allied countries affected trade, mainly due to the environmental policy, which froze, particularly the implementation of a free trade agreement with the European Union.

In foreign policy, one of the high points of Lula da Silva’s administration in his first presidential term, there should be an explicit reformulation, which will imply significant changes in the positions of Brazilian diplomacy.

The political situation in Latin America, dominated by the rise of center-left forces in most countries, could facilitate the return of Brazil’s role as a regional leader and pave the way for Lula da Silva’s aspiration to make the country a major player in world affairs.

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