Lula in the reconquest of Brazil, farewell Bolsonaro?


The current Brazilian president has never been so unpopular and the next elections seem promised to Lula. Unless there is an unlikely turnaround…

One hand on the handlebars to zigzag between the journalists, another in the air to greet the ecstatic crowd: Jair Bolsonaro participated in his fourth Motociata last Thursday. (Convoy of bikers in Portuguese.). Hair in the wind on a sports motorcycle and several hundred bikers in his retro, it’s his new way of mobilizing the few supporters he has left across Brazil. The “Trump of the tropics” knows how to mobilize this population and this is not his first highway blockage. After a stint in Natal, in their northeast, and in Orlando in the United States last month, it is in Pernambuco (northeast) that the ex-soldier has this time gathered his troops.

Read also: Exclusive – Lula: “I will be a candidate against Bolsonaro”

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At sixty-seven, not too much time to drag on his “bike”. After a few kilometres, he climbs back into the dumpster of his team’s Pick-up to continue his parade to downtown Caruaru. Then followed a political meeting and a walkabout specific to the character: sitting on the shoulders of one of his bodyguards, everyone has the right to their selfie, to their handshake. It was in a meeting like this that he had been stabbed four years earlier, during the previous presidential campaign. Brushing with death does not seem to have changed his conceptions of political rallies.

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On this day, Jair Bolsonaro looks more confident than ever. Opinion polls do not reach him? Or, admittedly defeated, is he taking full advantage of his last weeks as head of state? Terrible management of public services, more than six hundred thousand deaths during the Covid pandemic and a climato-skepticism that he claims ever stronger; today it seems difficult to imagine a re-election of the outgoing president. The far right seems to be losing its political grip in Brazil.

Elections already won for Lula?

Jair Bolsonaro has never been so low in opinion polls. He is also breaking a record: since the return of democracy to the country in 1985, no president has been so unpopular. 73% of the country says it disagrees with the actions it is taking (June 23, 2022). Less than a hundred days from the first round, Lula, the old beast of the Brazilian left, is more than ever in the countryside. The debate is settled and the former president (2003-2011) has regained all his fighting energy to bring down the populist president. In an ultra-polarized Brazil, the centrist electorate, orphaned for years, will once again be the key to these elections.

“We are all ready to work not only for victory, but for the reconstruction and transformation of Brazil, which will be more difficult than the election itself.” The former steelworker seems to be preparing more for the reconstruction which, according to him, will start the day after October 2, the date of the first round of elections. Without a successor on the left, at seventy-six, he has never been so close to a third term. The former trade unionist remains on his guard all the same and multiplies his trips across the country. No election is decided in advance, the former prisoner for corruption now knows how to be wary…

He fills Brazil with shame

The record of the one who presented himself in 2018 as the only credible opposition to Lullism is very dark. Brazilian youth have only one word in mind to describe Bolsonaro: “shame”. Luiza, a 22-year-old student in Curitiba (Paraná) does not hide her disgust ”What Lula has achieved in the last twenty years in Brazil has been destroyed in four years by Bolsonaro.” Among Brazilians aged eighteen to twenty- four years, Lula is credited with 77% in the voting intentions for the presidential election. The current president seems far from the concerns of this youth.

“The forest fires in the Amazon have never been so important for almost twenty years, it is a treasure that Brazil has that Bolsonaro does not know how to preserve.” More than a thousand kilometers squares of Amazonian forest burned in the year 2021, the equivalent of ten times the area of ​​Paris. For a year, more than a hundred petitions calling for his dismissal have been pending in the Chamber of Deputies, but its president, Arthur Lira, an ally of the government, has obviously taken no action. Every day of this term seems like a day too many for most of the 213 million Brazilians. For Luiza: “The



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