It was considered unlikely that a poor farm worker’s son from Brazil’s interior would one day hold the country’s highest office. Yet Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who went from shoe shiner to metalworker to union leader, rose all the way to the top.
Lula was long behind in opinion polls ahead of the presidential election in October. When the 81-year-old and his Workers’ Party, the PT, unexpectedly defeated right-wing populist Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, many saw it as a victory for democracy.
Lula is the politicians’ answer to the Rolling Stones. He has shown incredible staying power, but the fact is that he is not getting any younger. And it is not an easy task to govern a gigantic country like Brazil. The question is how long he can last, says Andrés Rivarola, professor of Latin American studies at Stockholm University.
Lula da Silva is not without controversy. He was imprisoned over his involvement in one of Brazil’s biggest corruption scandals, “Operation Car Wash,” which began to unravel in 2014. A number of business leaders and party leaders were indicted and convicted. In 2017, Lula was sentenced to nearly ten years in prison for money laundering, corruption and accepting a beachfront apartment as a bribe from one of the country’s construction giants in exchange for lucrative contracts. He has consistently maintained that the charges against him were politically motivated. In 2019, the Supreme Court ruled that he should be released pending the outcome of all appeals. A couple of years later, the judge was found to have been biased and the trial was annulled. But Lula is far from having the trust of all voters when it comes to his election promise to fight corruption.
José Tainan, a 36-year-old kitchen worker in Rio de Janeiro, does not remember the last time he went to the polls, but believes it was in the early 2000s and that he voted for Lula. Corruption made him stop taking part in elections.
There are no good alternatives. None of them appeal to me. I would rather justify why I did not vote, he tells AP.
New scandal
During the election campaign, a new scandal also erupted: Alexandre de Moraes, one of the judges in the case in which former President Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to prison, is said to have had contact with a banker accused of corruption. According to Rivarola, many voters would have voted blank if corruption had been the only issue, but Lula won votes on the issue of democracy.
Many votes were a vote against Bolsonaro rather than a vote for Lula, says Andrés Rivarola.
Another big problem for Lula is the Brazilian parliament, where he must assemble a coalition with several other parties, some of which are former opponents of Lula’s Workers’ Party.
“The main challenge he will face lies in his relationship with Congress. Congress will make it even more difficult to reach agreements,” writes Glauco Peres da Silva, a professor of political science at the University of São Paulo, in an email response to TT.
It is a motley collection of parties with different political agendas that must be brought together, but Lula is a “master” at handling just such situations, says Andrés Rivarola.
If there is anyone who can maneuver in a complicated political landscape, it is Lula.
Praised and criticized
Another area where Lula is both praised and criticized is environmental and climate policy. Since taking over from Jair Bolsonaro in 2023, deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has decreased and environmental institutions in the country have been strengthened. But Lula da Silva also supports oil drilling in the country, arguing that it is necessary for the country’s welfare. For example, he pushed for state oil company Petrobras to be granted permission to explore for oil in a deep-sea area with sensitive coral reefs and marine ecosystems at the mouth of the Amazon River in the state of Amapá.
“This is our country's passport to the future,” Lula da Silva said during a visit to the site.
However, he did not vote to allow oil drilling, says Andrés Rivarola.
Here Brazil actually reminds us of our neighbor Norway, which speaks warmly about climate policy and electric cars but which we all know lives on its oil.
What do you think?