The former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reinforced this week, with a view to the October elections, the possibility of running as a candidate vice president to his former rival, the former governor of São Paulo Geraldo Alckmin.
Lula, favorite in the polls against the weakened Jair Bolsonaro, left the door open to possible alliances with the parties that voted in favor of the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016, a strategy that aims to build a parliamentary majority that guarantees governability in a possible third presidential term.
“If Alckmin as vice president helps me govern, I don’t see any problem. The differences will be put aside because the challenge more than winning is repairing Brazil”he stated in an interview with Radio B in which he was consulted about Alckmin, a conservative politician who facilitated the demonstrations in favor of Rousseff’s removal from office in São Paulo.
Alckmin, a former São Paulo governor whom he faced in the 2006 presidential elections and who left the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) in December, still has to join a party to seal the alliance with Lula, who has not yet officially run as a candidate for President.
With this alliance, the PT aims to have the path paved to for the first time be able to win the governorship of the most powerful and populous state in the country, São Paulowith 46 million inhabitants, a position for which he seeks the candidate to be Fernando Haddad, a former presidential candidate in 2018.
Last month, as a first nod to this alliance, Lula greeted the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in the celebration of its 38th anniversary. The message was sent a few days after the MST coordinator, Joao Paulo Rodrigues, expressed his respect for the conservative Alckmin.
A broad alliance
The former president is negotiating with the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) a party federation for four years to support his eventual government, because he is the favorite in the polls to win the general elections on October 2 against President Jair Bolsonaro.
One of the intentions that motivate him to aspire to the presidency, confirmed the founder of the Partido de los Trabajadores, is “repair what was destroyed after the coup” that dismissed Rousseff and for which policies of economic opening and economic reforms were applied by the governments of Michel Temer and Bolsonaro.
Asked if he is willing to make alliances with those who in 2016 voted for the dismissal of his former political dolphin, he acknowledged: “If I don’t talk to whoever voted for Dilma’s impeachment, I don’t talk to anyone, because 90% of the political class has voted for it. The Congress is not the one I want, it is the one chosen by society and each parliamentarian represents a sector of society.”
And he insisted: “If I have to talk to the one who voted for Dilma’s impeachment, I will talk. I have to think about the country of the futurenot in the country of 2014, 2015, 2016. A country with new attitudes should be built.”
Another of the priorities of his eventual government will be the recovery of the educational and social backwardness of the poorest children due to the pandemic and the policies of the Bolsonaro government. “We are going to have an immense job to recover the backwardness of the poorest children, who did not have the means to follow classes remotely, we are going to have to take care of health because we have an irresponsible president who makes daily lies, at all times, his reason for being,” said the former metallurgist.
Sergio Moro, a “clay doll”
In the interview, Lula also made reference to the former judge Sérgio Moropresidential candidate for the right-wing Podemos party, who in 2018 sent him to prison in Operation Lava Jato and banned him from the elections that year, which Bolsonaro won.
“It is a clay doll that is falling apart. For now, I do not consider him a candidate, let him expose himself more, let him be naked, because without the position of judge he is worth nothing,” Lula said about Moro, who in 2018 joined Bolsonaro as Minister of Justice and later broke with him. current president.