The Brazilian president did not use the trauma of January 8 to impose a radical turning point on his country. His third term is likely to give priority to the stabilization of the country rather than to great social progress and to substantive reforms.
by Bruno Meyerfeld (Rio de Janeiro, correspondent)
Analysis. The image comforted many Brazilians. On January 11, in Brasilia, the head of state, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva, took part in the office of two of his ministers. Planned for a long time, the ceremony has been maintained as planned at the Planalto, this presidential palace ransacked three days earlier by a crowd of far -right rioters. Some still broken windows testify to the violence of the assault.
Around 5 p.m., here they are entering: Sonia Guajajara, native Prime Minister of the history of Brazil, and Anielle Franco, black activist in charge of racial equality, sister of the municipal councilor Carioca Marielle Franco, murdered In 2018. Dressed respectively with a white feathered cap and a dress with African patterns, the two women descend hand in hand the ramp in propeller leading to the noble living room of the Planalto. All, under the lifes of hundreds of people, sometimes moved to tears.
Lula has not failed in his reputation as a genius director. This January 11, he will have offered the cameras a new image with irresistible power, from the same template as that of his inauguration, the 1 er January, when he posed at the entrance to this same Planalto At the arm of the Cacique Raoni Metuktire. At 77, the head of the Brazilian left remains the undisputed master of the political symbolism.
the manes of “gegê”
But, behind this engaging facade, Lula actually inherits a republic in a thousand pieces. Save of the Planalto, the Congress and the Federal Supreme Court represents an unprecedented attack on the Brazilian institutions. Beyond its insoluble ills (inequality, deforestation, racism, violence), the Latin American giant is now confronted with a new scale: to preserve its democracy.
Revenue to power for a third term – he had been elected in 2002 and re -elected in 2006 -, the former metallurgist accomplished a rare feat in a democracy … But not a unprecedented prowess either. There are a few precedents: in Europe, those of General de Gaulle, back in 1958 after his long crossing of the desert, and Winston Churchill, re -elected to 10 Downing Street in 1951; In Latin America, that of Argentinian President Juan Domingo Peron, finding Casa Rosada in 1973.
Brazil also had already been entitled to his political and legendary comeback. Sixty-two years before Lula, it was Getulio Vargas who, in 1951, took up the keys to power. Arrived at the presidency in 1930 in favor of a coup, this gaucho of the southern pampas had already ruled the country for fifteen years, as constitutional president (1930-1937) then dictator of the “new state regime “(1937-1945). Overturned by the army, he returns to business by the ballot box.
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