Brasilia (EFE).- The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, will celebrate one month in power this Wednesday, a period in which he has faced a coup attempt from the extreme right and had social winks, but has not finished clarifying his lines economic.
Lula assumed the Presidency for the third time on January 1, after having governed between 2003 and 2010, and did so amid protests by far-right activists who demanded a coup to keep former president Jair Bolsonaro in power, who two days earlier had traveled to the United States, where he still remains.
The Bolsonaro challenge
Although Bolsonaro’s departure and the great popular celebration of the inauguration seemed to have discouraged the coup leaders, on Sunday, January 8, the ultra-right tried to force a military insurrection with a violent attack against the three powers of the nation.
In events that are still being investigated, but in which it is presumed that there was even the complicity of a few members of the Armed Forces, thousands of activists simultaneously occupied and destroyed the offices of the Presidency, Parliament, and the Supreme Court.
The most serious attack on Brazilian democracy since the 1964 coup, which inaugurated a dictatorship that lasted 21 years, was put down after about four hours and left nearly 1,800 detainees, a third of whom are still in prison.
Lula, who received support from the entire international community, was firm against the coup and promoted some changes in the leadership of the Armed Forces aimed at expunging Bolsonaro.
The effect sought by that radical minority ended up being a boomerang that dismantled the extreme right and led more moderate conservative sectors to support the political “pacification” proposed by the progressive leader.
The social accent and the Yanomami tragedy
Official sources consulted by EFE admitted that the violence of “8-E” caused a certain “stunning” in a government that was taking its first steps.
That did not prevent, however, that Lula showed the social accent that he intends to give to his administration.
He renewed a subsidy plan that provides about 600 reais ($300) a month to some 40 million people living in poverty and opened a broad dialogue with civil society in order for them to collaborate in the formulation of social policies, which are still in process of design.
It showed its most human face after the Ministry of Health revealed a very serious humanitarian situation in Yanomami territory: malnutrition, malaria, high mortality rates and rivers contaminated with mercury used by illegal miners who began to operate in that Amazon region encouraged by Bolsonaro.
Lula traveled to Yanomami land, decreed a “sanitary emergency” and ordered a vast relief operation, as well as an investigation into what he believes may constitute the crime of “genocide.”
Along these lines, the Supreme Court determined this Monday that Justice analyze the possible responsibility of Bolsonaro government officials and their alleged “omission” in the face of the Yanomani crisis, denounced for more than two years by the indigenous people.
An intense diplomacy, but doubts in the economy
Lula also fulfilled his promise that Brazil would “return to the world”, after having been virtually isolated by the ideological burden that Bolsonaro imposed on his foreign policy.
The new president made two official visits to Argentina and Uruguay, which included the return of Brazil to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), materialized at the summit held in Buenos Aires.
Whether during his inauguration or within the framework of Celac, Lula has met in his first month with 15 foreign leaders, half of those that Bolsonaro met during four years in power.
It has also reactivated diplomatic relations with Venezuela, broken by Bolsonaro due to his ideological differences with Nicolás Maduro.
economic doubts
This first month in office has not helped to clear up doubts about his economic policy, which will partly depend on the support of a Congress that will be installed this Wednesday, with a conservative majority.
The Government has promised to propose a tax reform that imposes a greater burden on the richest and to modify laws that limit public spending to expand social investment, as well as to design a new industrial policy that promotes a resumption of activity and the Job creation.
However, the lack of definitions has sown mistrust in the financial market, which forecasts inflation of close to 6% and insufficient growth of 1.2% this year.
