The government leader in the Federal Senate, Jaques Wagner (PT-BA)is one of the most experienced members of the president’s party Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and one of the closest allies of the Chief Executive, with whom he has been a personal friend for decades.
Governor of Bahia for two consecutive terms, between 2007 and 2014, Wagner was also minister of Labor and Employment (2003-2004), Institutional Relations (2005-2006), Defense (2015) and Civil House (2015-2016 ), having actively participated in Lula’s first two governments and also in Dilma Rousseff’s mandates (2011-2016) in the Presidency of the Republic.
In an interview with the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo published this Monday (23), Wagner praises the fiscal package presented by the federal government and approved last week by Congress, defends Lula against criticism from sectors of the financial market and bets that the President of the Republic, despite recent health problems, must be a candidate for re-election in 2026.
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“He [Lula]for 79 years, is a very well maintained guy. He runs, plays football, he’s better than me, super fit. However, because he had a problem that anyone can have, and due to bad luck the fall caused what it did, then the stock market goes up, the stock market goes down. For the love of God, people. It even has a cruelty to it. A lot of people must have made money from his illness”, criticizes the government leader.
“I don’t think that on the health side it’s the problem. The decision [sobre a eventual candidatura] It will be very personal for him if he wants to offer himself for another four years. He is a political animal. I would tell you: health, for me, will definitely not be a decision variable”, continues the senator.
“It will be his personal decision. If the political circumstances are not good, he will probably have more impetus to come to the election, and not the other way around. He might even say: we’re swimming, 70%, 60% assessment [positiva]it’s time to renew. If you ask: what do you think? I think he will be”, ventures Wagner.
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The government leader in the Senate recognizes, on the other hand, that the PT faces enormous difficulties in renewing its staff. To date, the party has only been represented by three names in presidential elections: Lula (1989, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2022), Dilma (2010 and 2014) and Fernando Haddad (2018). Dilma and Haddad were Lula’s choices, who could not be a candidate in 2010 (after two consecutive terms) and 2018 (when he was in prison).
“I think the party is going through a renewal problem. I am obsessed with renovation, I did this in Bahia”, admitted Jaques Wagner, in reference to his successors in the Bahian government – Rui Costa, who governed the state from 2015 to 2022, and Jerônimo Rodrigues, elected governor in 2022.
Fiscal responsibility
In the interview with Sheetthe government leader in the Senate defended the Lula government from criticism that the fiscal package had been too timid to resolve the country’s public finances problem.
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For Wagner, “the effort being made by the government is very great”. “I think there has to be a balance between spending or investment and people’s well-being. I don’t dream about Argentina. Argentina, right now, could be a financier’s dream. Violent increase in poverty and homeless people. This, for me, is not the ideal country. ‘Oh, what beautiful finances, oh, what suffering people’”, he stated.
“We found the country with its social side completely depleted. Whether more could be invested gradually to recover from this is a criticism that can be made. But it is the president’s central commitment. I do not think, under any circumstances, that there is fiscal irresponsibility. We have improved the recipe. But the only speech I hear here is salute to so-called fiscal responsibility. I think no concept is absolute, exclusive.”
Wagner also says that “the debt continues at the previous government’s standard vis-à-vis GDP”. “Now, we increase revenue and increase expenses. Brazil is growing. We had to contingency how much of the PAC [Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento]? R$20 billion. The PAC is the president’s soul. For someone to say that this person has no fiscal responsibility when, in one of his central programs, he cuts R$20 billion…”, he criticizes.
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“The opposition leader said [na aprovação do pacote]: ‘I think it’s shy, but it’s on the right path’. Well, if you’re on the right path, the concepts aren’t left behind. The volume, who has to graduate it is the president. And he [Lula] there will be consequences. If he makes a mistake, he may not do so well in 2026”, adds the senator.
Asked if there was a “political bias” in the market’s negative reaction to the government’s fiscal package, Wagner said that this “is one of the components of the moment”.
“I’m not saying that’s all it is. I’m saying that there is a flavor to it, which is political struggle. It would be naive of me to think that things are just based on theoretical, economic convictions. There’s this and, if the guy can remove a chip, he will”, he assesses.
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“I will continue to say that today there is a much stronger ideological component than it has been in previous elections. But there is the issue of prosperity which, in my opinion, continues to be the driving element, people’s well-being”, continues Wagner.
“We also need to look at the following: Lula was president for the first time in 2003. Since then, it’s been 22 years. Many people who are voting now were born in this territory, with many of the things that were innovative. We need to find a narrative that shows that we are a locomotive moving forward, and not living in the past.”
Communication
Jaques Wagner also admitted, in the interview, that one of the biggest problems in Lula’s third term is the government’s communication. .
“There is a lack of a more qualified narrative of what we are doing; This is the feeling of many people. And it’s even a certain agony for the president, because he thinks that people are not given full knowledge of what is being done in a positive way, that is, the famous narrative. We have not yet found, as a political group, an outlet for this”, he concluded.
