In his first speech before Congress, Lula assured that the country must be rebuilt in the face of the threats of fascism.
The incoming president said he had no personal revenge but assured that his predecessors must answer to justice
Between intermittent crying and before a crowd that did not stop chanting his name, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva launched his third presidency with a promise to govern for “all Brazilian people”, trying to leave behind “the division and intolerance” caused by “a violent minority” to, in this way, “look to the future” with the aim of reducing a social inequality exacerbated during the ultra-right government and described as scandalous. Lula had first spoken in Congress, where he took office and set the guidelines for his project. However, it was in the Esplanade of the Ministries of Brasilia where the most eloquent symbols of the change of era were exhibited. The ex-metallurgical worker did not have any representative of the previous administration by his side to transfer the presidential sash to him. The rite was shared with a child, an indigenous man, Chief Raoni Metuktirea worker, a feminist and Afro-Brazilian militant, a worker and a person with disabilities.
The parliamentarians listened to the most medullary speech. “After the terrifying challenge that we overcome we must say democracy forever“, he assured, in an unequivocal allusion to the previous four years. “If we are here today it is thanks to the political awareness of Brazilian society and the democratic front that we have formed throughout a historic electoral campaign.”
Lula promised “respond to the hope of a suffering people. With your strength and God’s blessing we will rebuild this country“. His intervention before the legislators, his 37 ministers, the judicial and military authorities, as well as the heads of state invited to the inauguration, included a bitter diagnosis of the inheritance of Jair Bolsonaro. He spoke of “ruin” Y “disaster” at the social, environmental, educational, cultural and political levels. “Never have State resources been so embezzled for the benefit of an authoritarian project“, said.
Today we begin a new stage in the history of Brazil.
?: @ricardostuckert pic.twitter.com/UuKghbZu6O
– Lula (@LulaOficial) January 1, 2023
The time of justice
The incoming president assured to start his third government No “personal revenge”. However, he recalled that Brazil has gone through a “tragedy” marked by covid-19, which caused almost 700,000 deaths, and the terror exercised from the heights of power, especially while the pandemic lasted. According to Lula, in those difficult moments, the prevailing “criminal attitude of a government in denial and insensitive to life”. And he stressed: “this responsibility should not go unpunished.” Those who were wrong, “will answer for their errors, with ample rights of defense, within due legal process.” The president repeated the same idea on the Esplanade of ministers. “No amnesty” the protesters yelled. Faced with the latent possibility of an anti-democratic attitude of the extreme right, he pointed out: “To the threat of fascism We will respond with the powers of democracy, to hate, with love.”
Recoil
On another January 1, 2002, Lula had expressed the desire to end his presidency guaranteeing Brazilians three meals a day. “Having to repeat that commitment today in the face of the advance of misery and the return of the hunger that we had overcome is the most serious symptom of the devastation that has been imposed on the country in recent years.” The coalition governmentin which the left converges, the center, embodied in the vice president Geraldo Alckmin, and even sectors of the moderate right, will try to promote fiscal balance, sustainable economic growth and agreements with businessmen and unions so that “the wheel of the economy turns again.” But from the first minute, she remarked, there is an urgency: 33 million hungry Brazilians. “It is not fair to ask for patience from those who bore the heaviest burden of the project of national destruction.”
The Bolsonaro era was marked by “individualism” and the promotion of the “law of the strongest”, close to the “barbarism”. The president vowed to quickly repeal one of the far-right’s key laws: free access to guns and ammunition.
The new role of Brazil
True to his style, Lula broke the rigors of protocol on more than one occasion. The colloquial tone was not at odds with the formulation of an ambitious roadmap. “Brazil is too big to give up its productive potential. We can and must be at the forefront of the global economy. We need to once again promote South American integration and, on this basis, dialogue with the US, China and the EU”. The president warned that “we are not going to tolerate further degradation of the environment”. the regulations that caused great “injustices committed against indigenous peoples”.
His government, he maintained, will resume a “democratic cultural policy, which was destroyed by the obscurantism”. He estimated that the persistence of a racist matrix that discriminates against Afro-Brazilians is “inadmissible”. He also promised to advance in gender and equality policies, the fight against organized crime and the vigilante militias from Rio de Janeiro, who never hid their ties to Bolsonarismo. “Faith will be able to be present in all the temples and cults” ¸ he said, with a hand outstretched towards the evangelical churches that has sustained the ex-captain of the Army.
teachings of history
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His return to power makes him akin to another myth in Brazilian politics. On October 29, 1945, Getulio Vargas he was dismissed after 15 years of validity of the so-called “New State”. Five years later he won an election again. Lula has no intention of following all of Getulio’s footsteps. In the midst of a political crisis, marked by media defamation, Vargas committed suicide on August 5, 1954 with a shot to the heart. Lula wants to fulfill his task to the letter and go down in history in another way.
“The first 100 days are essential for the new government. Lula has to work with a broader base than that of the Workers’ Party (PT) and, furthermore, maintain popular support,” recalled the newspaper ‘Estado’. From now on, he will have to negotiate with the political center and even ex-Bolsonaristas, if he wants to comply with the key aspects of his ambitious agenda.