Apparently, he recovered well from the . It’s a huge relief.
However, episodes like this make an unavoidable fact clear: at some point in the next few years, Lula will retire. He will prefer to spend his last years listening to the cries of his great-grandchildren instead of the cries of his old man.
The team is not well positioned to survive without Lula in the game.
During the PT presidencies, the PT made an effort to pull the government to the left. It made perfect sense: the PT has always governed with broad alliances, with center and right-wing ministers, negotiating with one who has always been right-wing. Faced with this situation, PT members made an effort not to let the government’s progressive identity be completely erased. It wasn’t always easy, but overall the goal was achieved.
Lulism has always been more moderate than PTism and has always reached broader layers of the electorate. Without Lula, the PT will have to stop being the left wing of Lulism and become the heir of Lulism as a whole.
To do this, he will have to take upon himself the tasks that Lula performed as guarantor of major alliances. He will have to make gestures outside the leftist bubble that were previously Lula’s responsibility.
It won’t be easy. But some synthesis between PTism and Lulism will be necessary if the party wants to continue winning majority elections.
I don’t know what this synthesis will be like – it’s up to the PT members and their voters to find it – but I have a suggestion: not to frame this discussion in terms of “more radicalism vs. more moderation”, or “turn to the center vs. return to the bases”.
These alternatives are not that clearly different.
The “back to basics” alternative, for example, is usually associated with the more radical left. But many activists who are returning to basics are having to deal with new phenomena, such as popular entrepreneurship, uberization, and other things that require new ideas. In the last election, , one of the big names on the left close to social movements, ran a campaign particularly committed to talking to this new working class.
On the other side, he is probably the main name of the moderate PT at the moment. But precisely because he is trying to bring public accounts up to date, Haddad was the first PT Finance Minister to buy into the fight over taxing the rich. Guido Mantega, who many would place on Haddad’s left, was notable for granting tax exemptions to large companies.
Another question is whether the PT will be able to build this alternative alone.
The 2017 political reform established rules that are already reducing the number of Brazilian parties and creating large party machines, almost all of them right-wing. For the PT to be able to compete with these very rich parties, it is likely that it will need to organize a federation with other parties. I spoke about the idea of a left-wing federation in the column on October 19th this year.
One thing is certain: if the left only starts thinking about post-Lula the day after his retirement, there is a real risk of there not being a strong left-wing party in Brazil for many years.
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