By LUIS FELIPE MIGUEL*
The Lula formula is worn out and what we need is not someone to imitate it, but someone to help find ways to overcome it.
1.
The second round of the elections brought no surprises. The main winners were politicians from traditional opportunist parties, who presented themselves with a right-wing rhetoric. The left was left with the consolation of celebrating the defeat of some angry Bolsonaro supporters and, for the rest, crying their eyes out.
It was a defeat that was foretold, but it was no less painful for that. In the capital of São Paulo, the most important election in the country due to its weight in national politics, Guilherme Boulos' failure epitomizes the exhaustion of a formula that has been showing problems for a long time. The question is whether there is the strength and willingness to change the course.
In his speech admitting defeat to his supporters, Guilherme Boulos said that his campaign had restored “the dignity of the Brazilian left.” It is impossible to agree with this verdict.
Yes, the campaign was tough. The effect of the Centrão’s control over the budget was felt throughout Brazil, including in São Paulo. The city and state government machines operated without limits – as did the far-right disinformation machine. The cherry on the cake was the criminal lie released by Governor Tarcísio de Freitas on Sunday morning.
It would be a case of revocation of his mandate. But he is calm, because he knows there will be no consequences. After all, in 2022, the drama he staged in Paraisópolis even resulted in one death – and everyone remains unpunished. The democracy that we fought so hard to rebuild after the 2016 coup has always had limits – and, above all, it has always had sides.
The problem is not the defeat at the polls. It is part of what is expected, since the left always competes in conditions of inferiority. The problem is that the 2024 campaign did not lead to any accumulation for the left. In fact, the balance seems to have been negative.
Guilherme Boulos was not only defeated at the polls. Due to his erratic and inconsistent campaign, his image as a political leader suffered significant damage and he wasted a golden opportunity to try to reintroduce a left-wing project in Brazil.
The PSOL candidate's performance was practically the same as in 2020: in the proportion of valid votes in the second round, the difference is only seen in the second decimal place. But he was competing with a much weaker opponent, Ricardo Nunes, devoid of any charm, without the political weight or the surname of Bruno Covas, leading an administration considered mediocre by everyone and with a collection of glass ceilings that ranged from theft of lunch money to violence against women.
Perhaps even more importantly, Guilherme Boulos ran a very rich campaign, with a budget of over R$80 million – something that a left-wing candidate has never had in a municipal election in Brazil. With all this money, he was unable to win the election, nor to promote an expansion of the level of political debate that would have allowed for an increase in the critical consciousness of the electorate. His speech was marked by permanent capitulation to the most debased common sense, since there was never a moment of political education.
According to current analyses, Guilherme Boulos was defeated due to his rejection rate. There is some truth in this verdict. For this reason, his campaign identified reducing the candidate's rejection rate as its main target. The path chosen was to try to modulate his image, instead of questioning the ideological formulations that generated rejection of someone who came from the popular movement and had a history of fighting against the current structures of oppression.
This is not an issue that can be resolved during an election campaign, of course. As it has completely surrendered to electoral politics, which has become the be-all and end-all of its main organizations, the Brazilian left has seen the reach of its own communication channels, linked to grassroots work, diminish and has come to depend increasingly on bureaucracy, media and advertising. However, without resolving the issue, the campaign provides an important window of visibility to dispute representations of reality and offer diverse projects for the construction of new collective wills. This opportunity was wasted.
2.
The difference in Guilherme Boulos’ candidacy was not a leftist discourse, but Lulism – that is, a program of timid (but not unimportant) changes, with a refusal to engage in any confrontation, hoping to seduce the ruling classes into a civilizing project. Lula’s ability to transfer votes proved to be much lower than expected, but the campaign remained stuck in the unconditional defense of the federal government, assuming the burden of both its visceral rejection by an ideologically-driven electorate (the “anti-petismo”) and the limits imposed by its policies of fiscal adjustment and accommodation with privatization.
In fact, the Brazilian left wing has been ready to back down on everything for some time now, afraid of confrontation. There is no anti-capitalist discourse, there is barely any talk of imperialism, the class struggle has disappeared, “entrepreneurship” and “innovation” have taken over the vocabulary, the right to abortion is taboo, and so on. The PSOL’s surrender to Lulaism, which Guilherme Boulos embodies like no other, has removed the last significant element of tension in the adherence to this strategy.
The only exception is the identity sealing, which in Guilherme Boulos' campaign appeared in the sad episode of “national anthem" So much effort to avoid urgent and necessary discussions – only to then embrace the wear and tear of a useless controversy. It is always worth remembering that the sealing has nothing to do with political education. It is a tool exclusively at the service of the inconsequential narcissism of a few.
After a first round dominated by cuteness, in which he seemed to talk more about Taylor Swift than real estate speculation and in which he went from favorite to underdog, winning a place in the second round with a mechanical eye, Guilherme Boulos had to change his stance.
Still, he never bet on politicization. He tried to get closer to Pablo Marçal's voters, but by mimicking the nods to “entrepreneurship”. When the blackout handed him a topic capable of shaking up the campaign, he chose to reduce it to the management of the city hall (tree pruning), leaving the issue of privatization in the background. And so on.
The desperation at the end of the campaign led Guilherme Boulos to accept participating in Pablo Marçal’s “interview.” I admit that this was a difficult decision. On the one hand, it would be a chance to speak to a significant portion of the electorate, who are normally resistant to him. On the other hand, it would be violating a necessary health cordon, accepting as a legitimate interlocutor a criminal, someone who had resorted to the worst possible vulgarity, culminating in the infamous falsification of a medical report against Guilherme Boulos himself.
By participating in the “interview” without even confronting Pablo Marçal, Guilherme Boulos agreed, as former federal deputy Milton Temer said, to pose as an “extra at the launch of a campaign for president in 2026”. It is difficult to know whether he gained any votes with this. But he gave his approval to yet another turn in the downward spiral of Brazilian politics.
It has been clear for quite some time that Guilherme Boulos' project is to repeat Lula's trajectory: from the social movement to electoral politics, from the margins to the mainstream, from defeat to victory. All this in fast track, of course, covering in three or four years what, with Lula, took a decade and a half.
It's not working. Maybe because it lacks the charisma and authenticity of the original. Certainly because circumstances have changed. Lula's formula is worn out and what we need is not someone to imitate it, but someone to help find ways to overcome it.
Yesterday's speech, after the defeat, shows that Guilherme Boulos has not yet realized it. But if he does not change course, he will not be Lula – he will be Marcelo Freixo.
* Luis Felipe Miguel He is a professor at the Institute of Political Science at UnB. Author, among other books, of Democracy in the capitalist periphery: impasses in Brazil (authentic). [https://amzn.to/45NRwS2].
Originally published on Boitempo's blog.
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