The president () will give a kind of kick-start to the electoral campaign and reaffirm his candidacy for re-election this Saturday (7) in , when he takes part in the celebration of the 46th anniversary of the PT.
The event will serve as a way for the president to establish his position, mobilize his activism and indicate the campaign’s guidelines, which include defending the legacy of PT’s administrations, comparison with opponents and agendas such as the end of the 6×1 scale.
The bet is an ideological discourse for . The PT will reaffirm itself as a party that was “born anti-system”, against inequalities and against privileges.
The PT goes into the campaign leaving the institutional turmoil under (PL) in the background, with the motto “democracy won, heading for the fourth”.
Unlike 2022, when the campaign revolved around fighting Bolsonaro, the understanding is that the current election will be a plebiscite on the four years of Lula’s government.
In this way, the PT will seek to demarcate its territory in the ideological field and defend the legacy of management, promoting new brands such as Pé-de-meia, Gás do Povo, Desenrola, in addition to the National Driving License programs.
The party’s vision is that specific sectors of society will be decisive in the outcome of the elections, including precarious workers, young people, small entrepreneurs and voters who fluctuate politically.
In a lecture to PT activists and leaders in Salvador on Thursday (5), marketer Otávio Antunes indicated that the campaign will have a strong political struggle component and that it will not be enough to repeat numbers of achievements achieved by the government.
The path will be to oppose the right, seen as the defender of elites and privileges, and seek to expose the anti-system discourse of the .
“We were, in our origins, the party that faced the system. And the system is not democratic institutions, as a part of the extreme right points out. The system is those who always want to take a piece of the State for themselves, who do not allow the poorest to prosper”, he stated.
The political resolution of the National Directorate, approved after the meeting in Salvador, defines the PT as a party “guided by the commitment to fight against a system that allows millions of people to go hungry so that few become billionaires, that kills poor young people and black people in the outskirts and turns a blind eye to the billions generated by financial crimes.”
The party will focus on issues such as zero fares on public transport and taxation of the super-rich.
“We are going to leave governmentism aside, in the sense of just presenting the things that the government did. We are going to talk about things that affect the collective imagination, fight against privileges and against the powerful who have never faced justice”, says PT’s communications secretary, Éden Valadares.
The crisis involving the bank is also on the party’s radar, which will define a communication strategy to reaffirm that Lula defends the investigations and that the liquidation of the bank took place under the PT administration.
On Thursday, the national president of the PT, Edinho Silva, defended that the party supports the opening of Master’s CPI.
“What happened at Banco Master needs to be investigated and those responsible need to be penalized. If this reaches the political sphere, if you have leaders who took advantage of fraud, they must be held accountable,” he stated.
Lula landed this Friday (6) in Salvador to fulfill an institutional government agenda and subsequently paid a visit to the Sanctuary of.
This Saturday, the president will participate in the event that will celebrate PT’s 46th anniversary. The party takes place at Trapiche Barnabé and will end with a performance by .
Aliados has avoided treating the event as a pre-campaign launch. The assessment is that Lula should prioritize government actions and inaugurations until mid-year.
Bahia was chosen to host the event as a way of reaffirming the state’s electoral importance, which gave Lula a front of four million votes in the dispute against Bolsonaro in 2022.
Thus, Lula begins his pre-election tour in the Northeast, a region where the PT has four governors, but faces erosion in local management on issues such as public security.
The PT also faces turbulence in the region’s political field. In Bahia, the PT governor is also experiencing a crisis in his allied base that took shape with the departure of Senator Angelo Coronel, who is moving closer to the opposition.
The scenario is similar in Ceará, where public security has become the main driver of the political dispute, which could see the former minister (PSDB) as an opponent of governor Elmano de Freitas (PT).
In Rio Grande do Norte, governor Fátima Bezerra plans to resign to run for the Senate, but does not have the support of her vice president nor a majority in the Assembly in a likely indirect election.
In the party, the assessment is that a vote of gratitude, which led to the PT’s vote in the last elections, may not be enough to guarantee a wide margin of votes.
“Gratitude is not a universal value in elections. This check that we created Bolsa Família, which the poor man’s son goes to university, we cash a lot of times. But that alone doesn’t give us more votes. Gratitude alone doesn’t organize, it’s important to organize this through political struggle”, stated Otávio Antunes.
