Will Lula have an easy time in Congress?

Image: Magali Magalhães
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By BRUNO MACHADO*

Lula and the PT have everything to have good governance in their inclination towards the center-right

The economic elite demonstrated their support for Lula against Jair Bolsonaro with the rise in the stock market and the fall in the dollar on the first day after Lula's victory. In addition, the same Judiciary – which demonstrates to act under pressure from the media and the market, which are controlled by the economic elite – and which gave its approval to the impeachment of Dilma in 2015 and the arrest of Lula in 2017, annulled in 2021 the clearly illegal processes of the Lava Jato against Lula since 2013. To complete, ideologues of liberalism in Brazil, intellectual representatives of the national elite, declared their vote for Lula in these 2022 elections. And finally, the oligopolistic media that pursued Lula since his appearance in national politics showed sympathy for his candidacy on the ticket with Geraldo Alckmin, and has attacked Jair Bolsonaro very aggressively since 2020.

With this support from most of the national elite, formally observed on the ticket with Geraldo Alckmin but also verifiable in the change in positioning of the Judiciary and the media (the so-called fourth power), the PT will probably move from the center-left to the center-right, replacing the space left by the almost deceased PSDB. As the PT's political strategy has been based on the search for electoral victories and alliances with the economic elite, the party is unlikely to give up the huge alliance it managed to establish in these elections and the great possibility of winning many upcoming presidential elections.

It is a fact that this year's parliamentary elections elected a record number of Bolsonarists and this led to concern about Lula's governance in his third term. However, anyone who thinks that Congress votes according to political ideology is mistaken. The Brazilian Congress historically votes according to the funds released by the federal government for investments in its electoral strongholds and according to the will of the national economic elite, which is with Lula in 2022. it will be very different from the governance with the Centrão of the PT governments of the past.

That portion of Congress that won the elections through Bolsonarism represents a less wealthy and more criminal portion of the national elite. However, the dispute for economic power, which determines the votes of the right in Congress, is always won by those with more money. Therefore, Bolsonarism in parliament will form a new center and will represent the national elite that will try to have the PT as its new PSDB. The parliamentarians who surfed the Bolsonarist wave will seek their elections by making agreements to bring funds to their municipalities and please their voters, at the same time that they will seek to be useful to the economic elite that determines the paths of their parties by being their representatives in Congress, as they have always done. right-wing lawmakers.

Bolsonarism as a neo-fascist movement needed an economic and social crisis to gain popularity at the polls. This crisis that came with the fall in the prices of commodities in the Dilma Rousseff government and with Lava Jato driven by the media. Without this external scenario, since the price of commodities has returned to high levels, and without the internal scenario of moral terrorism by the oligopolistic media, which at the moment has sympathy for Lula-Alckmin, Bolsonarism – which is a neo-fascist movement – ​​tends to lose popularity.

Furthermore, the material viability of a fascist government depends on the support of the economic elite, since fascism defends the interests of capital and not the interests of workers. This support was represented by Paulo Guedes, Ricardo Salles and by the euphoria of the financial markets with Bolsonaro. However, currently, such support from the elite only exists in the minority and backward portion of this economic elite, which is financially subordinated to the economic elite linked to banks and agribusiness, which already joined the Lula-Alckmin government and abandoned the Bolsonarism ship where they had embarked. sneakily in 2018.

With that, as long as he doesn't betray his controversial current allies, Lula and the PT have everything to have good governance in their inclination towards the center-right. And Bolsonarism, which goes beyond Jair Bolsonaro, has everything to weaken and disappear both in parliament and on the streets. It is very likely, therefore, that in 2026 there will no longer be a Bolsonarist presidential candidate with more than 15% of the voting intentions, and thus, Brazilian democracy will return to normality, opening space for new political forces that are democratic and republican.

*Bruno Machado is an engineer.

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