Lula will have 81 in the 2026 elections, almost the same as Biden in last year’s disastrous campaign. It is already the oldest Brazilian president in office. Its domestic fall, along with the recent symptoms of labyrinthitis, signal the obvious: “old age” is not the “best age”. However, there is a larger enemy of a new presidential candidacy than biological age: political age.
Since Vargas, no political leader has had as much influence in Brazil as Lula. Neither JK, the builder of Brasilia, nor FHC, the architect of monetary stability. But Lula, a political genius, only passed the great states of stratters once, 23 years ago, failing in the following challenges in 2010 and 2023.
The notable statesman changes the story for his courage and inspiration to make the unexpected – or be, break with his own speeches, challenge his supporters and indicate a new course. Think of Mandela and the reconciliation that founded South Africa Democratic. Or in Menachem Begin and the removal of Sinai that led to Israel’s peace with Egypt. Saved the proportions, it was what Lula did in 2002, with the letter to the Brazilian people who opened his way to the Plateau.
Since then, Lula has stagnated. In 2010, played by Superb, he anointed Dilma Rousseff, who led us to the largest postwar recession. In 2023, back to Planalto, he decided to govern as if Brazil – and the world – were in 2003.
The tragedy called partly generated by the historic misconception of 2010 gave him a new chance to make the unexpected. The opportunity was in an electoral alliance with the Democratic Center provided by resistance to coup, but he wasted her.
He could break with the “spending is life”, adjusting the fiscal compass to the north of the sustained interest reduction, but preferred the populist trick of stimuli to consumption. He could also surprise his own party, pointing out the similarities between right-wing (Bolsonaro) and Maduro (Maduro) authoritarianisms, but chose to persist in anachronistic dogmas, sinking into moral duplicity.
In the previous terms, Lula was directed. In the current one, it lacks strategy. The option for the alliance with the center was based on a pact of increasing public spending. Inevitable macroeconomic constraints imposed precarious fiscal control managed by Stoic. RESULTS: Chronic stratospheric interest rates and dramatic confrontation with the precipitated congress by the IOF decree.
The departure for demagogy, perennial seduction, opens the discursive ambivalences. The government blamed Campos Neto by the scorchants, pointing to him as an agent of the greed of the financiers, the enemy of the people. Then, when the BC passed the Galipolo, Lula’s nominee who continued the predecessor’s monetary policy, the Insult Lagoa dried up. Without the ancient scapegoat, the aim turns to the center, recycling the narrative of the “rich versus poor”.
From Dilma to Bolsonaro, Congress has acquired extraordinary powers. In the asymmetrical alliance with the center, the weak side is the executive, subjected to endless blackmail. The appeal desperate to the Supreme Court marks the decline of Lula’s political authority. The economy grows, but does not rescue the president’s popularity. Lula faces the worst age, more in politics than in biology.
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