Jul 28 2023 | Nº. 77

Editorial

While the Lula administration continues to grow and solidify its base of support in Congress, inviting conservative parties previously aligned with former president Jair Bolsonaro into the cabinet and other high-level positions, debates continue about presidential appointments within the executive branch. This week, Lula named economist Marcio Pochmann as the new president of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), the important government agency responsible for carrying out the census and other data collection. Pochmann is a longtime member of the Workers’ Party (PT) who failed twice in his bid for elected office but spent years administering Fundação Perseu Abramo, the PT’s think tank, as well as teaching at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP). Pochmann’s nomination was highly controversial in much of the press because critics say he represents a part of the PT that is fiscally irresponsible. Pochmann’s nomination came the same week that Lula floated the prospect of naming Guido Mantega, who served as finance minister for former President Dilma Rousseff during one of the worst economic stretches of Brazil’s recent history, to serve as the head of Vale, a major mining conglomerate partially privatized in 1997. Even more than Pochmann, Mantega has been harshly criticized for his time in government. Vale, however, is not a fully state-owned entity.

Pochmann is the one who will be serving in government. As such, there were political questions raised about the direction of the Lula government based on his nomination. To her credit, Simone Tebet, the centrist former senator who ran for president last year and is currently serving as Lula’s Minister of Planning and Budget, was diplomatic when asked about Pochmann’s nomination. He would, after all, be serving under her as IBGE is part of the ministry of planning and budget. “I don't make pre-judgments,” Tebet told reporters on Thursday, July 27, “because I have very often been pre-judged in my professional and political life.” She added that she would first meet with Pochmann, emphasizing that “I don't care about the past, I want to know about the present. The conversation will be technical. He will be treated as a technician, and he will be very welcome to our team. And he will remain at the IBGE, as long as he serves the interests of Brazilian society.”

Tebet’s political tact has been a notable feature of her role in the administration, working smoothly with Finance Minister Fernando Haddad in particular. There have been questions about her own political ambitions in the future, but she has been remarkably loyal to Lula and clear in her denunciations of Bolsonaro and the far right. Pochmann’s nomination by Lula would have been a prime opportunity for Tebet to distance herself from the chief executive. The fact that she chose not to perhaps speaks to the degree to which the administration is settling into a working rhythm after a few months defined by hiccups and a few mixed messages.

Highlights

• MARIELLE FRANCO CASE. Investigations into the death of Marielle Franco took an important leap forward on Monday, July 24. Former military police officer Élcio Queiroz denounced at least four others involved in the murder of the city councilwoman and her driver, Anderson Gomes in March 2018. Queiroz was driving the car from which another former police officer, Ronnie Lessa, fired the rifle shots at Marielle. In his statement, Queiroz told details about the crime and revealed the names of two other accomplices: Maxwell Simões Corrêa, known as Suel, who was responsible for disposing of the vehicle used in the crime, and Edimilson Oliveira da Silva, known as Macalé, responsible for monitoring Marielle's movements before the murder. Queiroz and Lessa have been in prison since 2019. Suel was arrested on Monday, July 24, and Macalé was murdered in 2021.

• PLEA BARGAIN. Queiroz's statement was given to the Civil Police as part of a plea bargain, in which he revealed details of the crime in exchange for a promise to obtain leniency in serving his sentence. Although Queiroz and Lessa were already in prison, the investigations had not advanced in the last five years. Queiroz's adherence to the plea bargaining agreement may motivate others involved to do the same. The investigators' expectation is that this chain of accusations will lead to the names of the perpetrators of the crime, who are linked to corrupt elements within the police and in areas of the Rio de Janeiro government.

• DEMOCRATIC LAWS. The Lula government will send to Congress a package of laws to toughen the penalties for those involved in actions against democracy in Brazil. One of the proposals is to increase from 12 to 40 years in prison the sentence of anyone who attempts to take the lives of the presidents of the executive, legislative and judiciary bodies– as well as other authorities of the Republic. Assaults against these authorities would carry a prison sentence of 12 years, instead of the current 6 years. Tougher penalties are also proposed for those involved in planning, inciting, financing and participating in anti-democratic movements.

• HARD HIT. The package proposed by the Lula government is part of a robust response by the government to the failed attempt at a coup d'état that took place on January 8, 2023, when thousands of followers of former president Jair Bolsonaro invaded and destroyed the presidential palace, the Congress, and the building where the Supreme Court is located. With harsher penalties, the government is trying to discourage and contain extreme right-wing pro-coup groups that are still organized in the country.

• GUN CONTROL. The Lula government has been overturning laws adopted by Bolsonaro. One of them concerns firearms. On July 21, Lula signed a presidential decree that again increases the requirements for the purchase, possession, and carrying of firearms in the country. One of the changes is the reduction in the number of weapons that hunters, marksmen, and collectors can have. Bolsonaro had increased it to 60 weapons, of which 30 were restricted for use by the armed forces. Now, Lula has reduced it to 16 weapons, of which 4 may have a military capability. Lula also took away from the army and gave the Federal Police the power to oversee firearms control. Days later, the Brazilian president said he had asked Minister of Justice Flávio Dino for a plan to reduce to a bare minimum possible the number of shooting clubs authorized to operate in the country.

• MILITARY INVOLVED. One of the people involved in the attempted coup is Alan Diego dos Santos, who was arrested and convicted for planning to blow up a truck loaded with fuel outside the airport of the capital, Brasilia, in December 2022, shortly after the election in which Bolsonaro was defeated by Lula. Dos Santos told the Civil Police that in Brazil there is a group of reserve soldiers – who are no longer active duty members of the armed forces – that was involved in the planning of these acts. The group, according to him, was mainly made up of ex-army paratroopers, who offered to help dos Santos install the bomb at the airport, in addition to monitoring the surrounding security and the movement of government security agencies during the period.

• LULA’S SURGERY. President Lula must undergo surgery to treat arthritis in his right leg. The operation is scheduled to take place in October or December. Lula has been publicly complaining of pain in his leg and hip. He revealed that he takes daily injections to deal with this pain, but they are no longer enough. The president is 77 years old and overcome laryngeal cancer in 2012.

NEWS FROM SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS AND MOVEMENTS:

PRESSURE FOR JUSTICE. The Marielle Franco Institute inaugurated a registration and mobilization campaign for people interested in closely following the investigations into the murder of councilwoman Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Torres. Interested parties enter their data on an internet platform and receive first-hand news about the state of the discoveries that may lead to the masterminds of the crime that occurred in 2018 in Rio de Janeiro.

BLACK WOMEN'S DAY. Brazilian Black movements promoted a series of events to mark the July 25, the International Day of Latin American and Caribbean Black Women. The N'Zinga Coletivo de Mulheres Negras, for example, was one of the organizations participating in “Julho das Pretas,” a mobilization that has taken place since 2013. This year, the theme was “Black women marching for reparations and a decent living.”  The day’s events brought together more than 230 organizations in 466 activities in 20 Brazilian states and the Federal District.

GUN CONTROL. The Sou da Paz and Igarapé institutes published a document in which they compare the policies adopted by Bolsonaro and Lula in relation to the control of firearms in Brazil. The comparison serves to guide the discussions regarding the measures that are being proposed by the current government to dismantle the incentive for the population to own and carry weapons, which was promoted by the

Feature Article

by Rafael R. Ioris

Much Ado about Nothing: Accurately Assessing Lula’s Recent International Overtures

That the world is undergoing major geopolitical transformations is no longer in question. The rise of Asia, particularly China, has indeed presented unprecedented challenges to the West-centered liberal order of the postwar era, whose roots in fact go back to the neo-colonial European and US expansions of the late nineteenth century. These events have become even more unsettling with the onset of a major military conflict in Ukraine, which has helped to further polarize political alliances along East-West lines. 

It was to be expected that such trends would provoke confusion, and a special kind of effort is required on the part of international analysts in order to make sense of the complex dynamics unfolding in the world of today. This is particularly true when examining the role played by countries traditionally less influential in the international arena, whose fate depends much on their ability to navigate the challenges and opportunities presented by such an evolving global scenario.

One such a country is Brazil, Latin America’s largest society and economy, and a nation that has recently seen its share of turbulence. In fact, after a stable period of democratic consolidation that lasted between 1985 and 2015, Brazil saw rapid erosion of its democratic institutions, so painfully gained in the long transition from military rule four decades ago. This process culminated in the election in 2018 of Jair Bolsonaro, a divisive political figure whose authoritarian rhetoric and administrative mismanagement gave voice to an extreme right-wing nostalgic for the dictatorship of the 1960s and 70s and cost over 700,000 lives.

And although Bolsonaro is no longer in power and battles multiple lawsuits, Brazil faces the challenge of rebuilding not only democratic practices, but also democratic values that need to be shared by all political actors should the country’s democracy indeed survive. This tasks in now mainly in the hands of Lula da Silva, a former president that served two extremely successful terms in the early 2000s, but who has become a more polarizing figure in recent years. Bringing the country together will require major political skills, which Lula has already demonstrated to have, as well as improvements on the economic front. 

In a global economy shaped today by new inflationary trends, energy shortages, and market instability, Lula’s domestic success will depend to a significant degree on his international achievements. While Bolsonaro obscured the relevance of country in the global arena, Lula had expanded Brazil’s presence by enlarging the list of economic partners and diversifying strategic partnerships, particularly in the global South, all of which done without jeopardizing traditional relations with countries such as the United States and the European Union. 

Since taking office, Brazil’s returning president has sought to promote a bold revival of his previous highly effective “active and assertive” foreign policy. But reproducing Brazil’s major achievements of twenty years ago are much harder to repeat in today’s challenging and changing world. Therefore, Lula has made sure to start his international pilgrimages by visiting traditional and central partners, such as neighboring nations and the United States. In his first month in office, he attended a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean nations (CELAC) in Argentina, where he outlined a desire to strengthen Brazil’s relations in the region. Soon after, Lula visited President Joe Biden in Washington, where both leaders professed their mutual desire to promote democracy and push for a more environmentally sound developmental path, particularly in the Amazon region. Once that trip was concluded, Lula visited China to deepen trade relations and to try to lead a peace effort for the war in Ukraine. He then met with traditional allies, like Spain and Portugal, as well as Italy and France.

All things considered, this “many friends” approach isn’t so different from Lula’s experiences of 20 years ago. Then, Brazil was largely welcomed as a rising diplomatic force in the developing world. President Barack Obama, during a 2009 meeting, made special note of Lula’s “forward-looking leadership in Latin America and throughout the world.” What has changed since then are the domestic and global contexts in which Lula now operates. Still, regrettably, what was once seen as a progressive pursuit of an autonomous and assertive foreign policy is now being interpreted by many in Brazil and the West as divisive, inappropriate or even a betrayal of Brazil’s traditional alignments. These views ignore not only Lula’s earlier international record but also a wider historical perspective. 

For more than a century, Brazil’s diplomatic efforts have focused on promoting multilateralism and on pushing for the peaceful resolution of conflicts. And while it drew closer to Western allies during World War II and the Cold War, successive governments in Brazil – be they progressive or conservative, democratic or authoritarian – pursued a policy of self-determination. Shaped by those dynamics, Brazil’s foreign policy has served the country well as an instrument of its own development.

Considering all of these elements, it is concerning to see that even qualified analysis about Lula’s attempt to reposition Brazil in the world after the fiasco of Bolsonaro’s subservient alignment with the United States under Trump still tend to be biased, particularly by taking the part for the whole. At first, some saw in Lula’s visit to China and his repeated attempts to urge for peace talks in Ukraine as a sign that Lula was espousing an anti-Western approach to international affairs. This is clearly not the case. Similarly, fears that Lula may be trying to create an anti-US Latin American alliance supported by China is unfounded and not supported by the facts. 

Yes, Lula dispensed more than advisable prestige to Nicolas Maduro during his recent visit to Brasilia to attend a meeting of South American nations. This, however, does not place Lula in close alignment with Venezuela, nor does it diminish the role that Lula actually played in calming things down in that country, largely with the approval the Bush administration early in the century. Likewise, Lula’s recent attempt to revive Unasur does indeed face important challenges. But that does not similarly diminish the fact that regional collaboration – a goal pursued by Lula’s predecessor, as well – has proven to be a challenging but promising project, including for the purpose of providing more economic and political stability, an objective that should, in fact, be seen as beneficial for, and thus worthy of support from, the United States. 

Brazil under Lula won’t risk the county’s future by picking sides on rising international conflicts or disputes. His main task is the reconstruction of the country’s democracy, and he will need all the help he can get on this effort, especially from its main historical partner, the United States, whose recent role in defending the country’s elections was decisive in paving the way to Lula’s inauguration. Lula is not seeking to isolate the country from traditional allies, and accurately understanding Lula’s recent international overtures can be helpful to avoid repeating previous analytical traps so detrimental no only to Brazil, but also to its relations with the United States and the world at large.

Rafael R. Ioris is Professor of Latin American History and Politics at the University of Denver and a WBO Research Fellow.

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.