2nd January, 2023
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Lula for short was, on Sunday, sworn in as Brazil’s new president. He held the same office twice, between 2003 and 2010. In other words, like a political phoenix, he has risen from his ashes thrice. In the October elections, he spanked Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula, in his speech, promised to rebuild a country in “terrible ruins” and condemned the policies of Bolsonaro who, to avoid the ceremony, had skittered to the United States.
Now that he is in power, Lula, labour activist and stormy petrel should take note of the time-worn aphorism: once beaten twice shy and one ambushed twice wary. He should put an anti-corruption mechanism in place and avoid any appearance of evil (or sleaze).
As reported by The Guardian of London, after claiming power in 2003, Lula used the windfall from a commodities boom to help millions of citizens escape poverty and became a respected international statesman, helping Brazil secure the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
According to Richard Bourne, Lula’s British biographer: “He made Brazil a significant player on the world scene … Brazil was a serious country – it helped create the G20, it established relations … with the Brics [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa]. Brazilians were nominated to run the WTO and the FAO.”
Lula, as The Guardian put it, left power in 2010 with approval ratings nearing 90%. But the following decade was a brutal one for the leftist and his party. The PT became embroiled in a series of sprawling corruption scandals and was blamed for plunging Brazil into a savage recession. Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached in 2016 in what many supporters called a political “coup”.
“Two years later Lula was jailed after being convicted on corruption charges that were last year quashed, paving the way for his sensational bid to reclaim the presidency. Lula would spend 580 days behind bars, during which time the far-right former soldier Bolsonaro was elected, ushering in an era of Amazon destruction and international isolation.
But the veteran leftist used his jail time wisely, plotting what just a few years ago seemed an unthinkable return to the presidential palace in Brasília.”