‘There are not two Brazils’: Can President-elect Lula bridge deep divides?

It’s common to hear after any election that “the hard work starts now,” but rarely has it been as appropriate as in Brazil this week. President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva faces the enormous task of uniting a nation divided almost precisely down the middle, and putting a rehabilitated Brazil back on the map.

Lula, as he is universally known, beat the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in a runoff on Sunday, winning with 50.9% of the votes, the slimmest margin in almost 30 years.

While Lula’s victory was a relief for his supporters, tired of the machinations of a populist president whose botched handling of the pandemic and crude attacks on opponents turned Brazil into an international pariah, nearly half the country is in mourning. The far-right fears Brazil will lurch to the left under its new leader, becoming “the next Venezuela,” rife with corruption and economic crises.

In his acceptance speech Sunday night, Lula spoke directly to the cooperation and unity that will be necessary over the next four years: “There are not two Brazils. We are a single country, a single people, a great nation,” he said. “No one is interested in living in a divided country.”

His resolve will be tested not only on the popular front, but as he aims to govern with a Congress dominated by right-wing, Bolsonaro allies. And echoing the turmoil faced by the U.S. after the 2020 presidential vote, Mr. Bolsonaro did not concede defeat when he finally addressed the nation almost 48 hours after the polls closed. His team only acknowledged the results and said a transition would begin.

Sporadic demonstrations emerged this week, with far-right groups blocking highways and burning barricades. Police were breaking up the protests on Tuesday morning but there were still incidents in 20 of Brazil’s 27 states.

The protests, and the close results of the runoff, underscore the two distinct visions at play in a nation crying out for unity.

“I think the main thing is for Lula to slowly rebuild confidence and establish consensus,” says Richard Lapper, author of “Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro.” “Stability – economic and social – is the key.”

“Enormous” challenges

On Sunday night, the muggy main streets of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro were filled with revelers wearing red and plastered with Lula stickers.

People hugged and sang together on the metro, then danced behind drummers and swigged drinks from foam coolers. Across the country, windows and balconies rang out with a two-word phrase: “Fora Bolsonaro!” or “Out Bolsonaro!” 

“I was on Paulista Avenue when Lula won 20 years ago, but this time it was much more special,” says Ana Paula França, a nutritionist. “We’ve waited four years for this, through the truculence and boorishness and the disregard for education and health. This was a cry of freedom.”        

Lula’s win was historic in many ways. It was the smallest winning margin and the first time a sitting president has lost a reelection bid in modern Brazil. It also marked Lula’s return to power after two terms served between 2003 and 2010.

One of eight children who was so poor he shined shoes for a living, Lula led a metalworkers union before entering politics and losing three consecutive presidential elections. His perseverance was rewarded with wins in 2002 and 2006, and he left office with approval ratings above 80%. Jailed in 2017 as a corruption scandal engulfed his Workers’ Party (PT), he was released almost two years later after a judge annulled the charges.

The Brazil he will lead is almost unrecognizable from the one he governed in the 2000s. The challenges, he admitted on Sunday, are “enormous,” both in terms of policy and people.

Half the country cannot forgive the PT for the corruption scandals that plagued their four successive governments, and the other half has developed a deep loathing for the far-right.

Lula promised to be president for every Brazilian, but he risks touching off deep-seated sensitivities with promises like repealing 100-year secrecy classifications Mr. Bolsonaro made on some documents that analysts say could be hiding questionable dealings. If Mr. Bolsonaro is brought to trial for his mishandling of the pandemic or dissemination of fake news, his supporters could feel personally attacked.

“Brazil’s social fabric has been irreversibly torn,” Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, a Brazilian academic who studies the far-right, wrote in a column for the UOL website, one of Brazil’s biggest. “I don’t believe in any politician who says they will bring peace and love back to Brazil,” she wrote, referring to his campaign slogan two decades ago, “Lula, peace, and love.”

Finding the center?

Peace and love would be a start, but there are more tangible problems to be addressed in what has long been a country of extremes: Inflation is volatile and inequality is increasing.

Following the pandemic, which claimed the lives of nearly 700,000 Brazilians and plunged many back into poverty, one in four Brazilians say they do not have enough to eat, according to a study by the Datafolha agency.

Deforestation ravaged the Amazon under Mr. Bolsonaro’s watch, increasing each year over the past four years as the president hollowed out oversight bodies and encouraged prospectors, loggers, and farmers to invade the rainforest.

Lula made a name for himself during his first two terms in office, lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty and slashing deforestation by 70%. He’s promised to focus on ending hunger in Brazil, bring back environmental oversight bodies, and create a separate ministry for Indigenous people.

“We want to create a new circle of prosperity, through democracy, fighting poverty, and sustainability,” Marina Silva, Lula’s former environment minister and one of his policy advisers, told reporters on the eve of the election. “You can’t do that in four years, but you can build the pillars in four years.” 

A commodities boom helped finance much of Lula’s spending in the early 2000s, but the global economy is different now. Already, a large part of next year’s federal budget has been apportioned by legislators, leading to cuts in health, education, and social spending – all of which are Lula’s priorities.

How well he manages will depend on his negotiating skills. Lula is known as the consummate politician, but even his experience will be tested.

Congress will be dominated again by the right, but much depends on how faithful they are to “bolsonarismo” – and how much common ground Lula can find with them. His campaign was backed by the broadest political front since the end of the dictatorship in 1985, but that might not count for much in Brazil’s notoriously dysfunctional Congress, says Mr. Lapper.

“He should avoid ideology, keep the hard left at a distance, avoid entanglement with divisive identity politics, and that will restore some confidence,” Mr. Lapper says.

“He has to deal with the center.”