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Brazil prepares to start an administration that Lula defines as a reconstruction government. Part of the idea that the country was destroyed by the management of Jair Bolsonaro.
In the first place, by adopting neoliberalism, he put into practice a policy of seeking the minimal State, that is, the centrality of the market. The objective of the minimal State was pursued with the privatization of public companies, with the reduction of public servants, with the weakening of social policies –education, health, social assistance and others–.
The centrality of the market was translated into the policy of deregulation of the economy, allowing large companies to carry out their interests without state interventions that could place limits on their actions.
The country that Lula will receive, as he has always said, will be much worse than the one he received in 2003. At that time, the Brazil of a neoliberal decade, of the governments of Fernando Collor and Fernando Henrique Cardoso. In addition to privatization and deregulation, the legacy was an economic downturn and high unemployment.
Lula has focused his government program on two fundamental points: the rescue of democracy and the resumption of the economic development model with centrality of social policies, with expansion of the internal market and job creation. That is, an anti-neoliberal policy.
The rescue of democracy is fundamental, it is a condition to overcome the Bolsonaro regime. Rescue the broken political system in 2016, which threw Brazil into the worst crisis in its history since the military dictatorship.
Lula’s economic policy is based on the initial presentation of a tax reform to Congress, with taxes on the top one percent. Allow the State to promote productive investments, with job creation and income distribution, raising wages above inflation and social policies.
Meanwhile, Lula is already being treated as the new president. He was invited to COP27, which he will attend, in November, before taking office, with the possible future Minister of the Environment, Marina Silva. Bolsonaro never participated in these meetings, but he protested that Lula would be usurping his position. And he announced that he will send a representative to the meeting, as if he could compete with Lula’s presence.
The president-elect already has meetings with Joe Biden, with Emmanuel Macron, among other representatives. In Brazil, Lula is organizing his government, which will have a central core of PT members, especially in the economy, education, culture, social assistance and foreign relations, among other areas.
The broad front on which Lula relied to win the elections requires the participation of other parties in the 33 ministries that the government will now have. The composition of the government will then be much broader than in his previous governments, without influencing the fundamental axes of his program.
Lula settled in Brazil, at the Centro Cultural do Banco do Brasil, specially adapted for him to systematize the organizational activities of his government, as well as to meet with the presidents of the Chamber and the Senate, as well as the president of the Supreme Court of Justice and the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
Taking advantage of Bolsonaro’s silence, Lula began the transition to the new government on the same Sunday of his election. Since that day, Lula has been at the center of the country’s political life.
Attempts to occupy the roads failed, lasting only three days and did not trigger any other type of protest. The block of parties that supported Bolsonaro is crumbling, several of them are already joining the parties that support Lula, while others, minorities, maintain the position of the extreme right.
The expectation is that Lula begins his government on January 1, already with around 70 percent support, since he is generating very favorable prospects among the mass of the population.
