International

Tough choices as Brazil’s Lula gets down to business

Photo: Carl de Souza / AFP

| By AFP | Marcelo Silva De Sousa

Fresh off a celebratory beach holiday, Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva got down to uglier business Monday: figuring out how to govern with a hostile Congress, nasty budget crunch and impossible-looking to-do list.

The political horse-trading of the transition period now starts in earnest for the veteran leftist, who will be sworn in for a third term on January 1, facing a far tougher outlook than the commodities-fueled boom he presided over in the 2000s.

Lula, 77, celebrated his narrow win over far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the October 30 runoff election by escaping last week to the sun-drenched coast of Bahia in northeastern Brazil.

He joked he needed a belated honeymoon with his first-lady-to-be, Rosangela “Janja” da Silva, whom the twice-widowed ex-metalworker married in May.

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His other honeymoon — the political one — could be short, analysts say.

Lula is meeting Monday with advisers in Sao Paulo. On Tuesday, he will travel to the capital, Brasilia, to finish assembling his 50-member transition team and start negotiating with members of Congress, two allies told AFP.

He faces a battle to get bills passed in a legislature where conservatives scored big gains in October’s elections.

Lula’s coalition has around 123 votes in the 513-seat Chamber of Deputies, and 27 in the 81-seat Senate, meaning he will have to strike alliances to get anything done — and even just survive, given the threat of impeachment in Brazil, where two presidents have been impeached in the past 30 years.

Into the shark tank

Lula is expected to meet in Brasilia with lower-house speaker Arthur Lira, a key Bolsonaro ally from the loose coalition of parties known as the “Centrao,” a group known for striking alliances with whoever is in power — in exchange for feeding on the federal pork barrel.

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Lula will be under pressure from the Centrao not to oppose the so-called “secret budget”: 19.4 billion reais ($3.8 billion) in basically unmonitored federal funding that Bolsonaro agreed to allocate to select lawmakers to boost support for his reelection bid.

Meanwhile, money will be tight for Lula’s campaign promises, including increasing the minimum wage and maintaining a beefed-up 600-reais-per-month welfare program, “Auxilio Brasil.”

Bolsonaro, who introduced the program, did not allocate sufficient funding to continue it in the 2023 budget.

“We can’t start 2023 without the ‘Auxilio’ and a real increase in the minimum wage,” the leader of Lula’s Workers’ Party, Gleisi Hoffmann, said Friday.

“That’s our contract with the Brazilian people.”

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Facing the impossible math of funding such pledges without breaking the government spending cap, Lula’s allies are exploring their options, including passing a constitutional amendment allowing exceptional spending next year.

But they are racing the clock: it would have to be approved by December 15.

Markets watching

Lula, who ran on vague promises of restoring Latin America’s biggest economy to the golden times of his first two terms (2003-2010), faces a bleaker picture this time around.

“The challenge is… how to balance fiscal responsibility with a highly anticipated social agenda,” in the face of high inflation and a possible global recession, said political scientist Leandro Consentino of Insper university.

Markets are watching closely — especially his pick for finance minister.

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Lula is expected to split Bolsonaro’s economy “super-ministry” into three portfolios: finance, planning, and trade and industry.

Analysts predict a political choice for finance minister, a technocrat for planning and a business executive for trade.

Names floated for the finance job include Lula’s former education minister Fernando Haddad and his campaign coordinator, Aloizio Mercadante.

COP27 stage

Other closely watched portfolios are the environment and a promised new ministry of Indigenous affairs — both sore spots under Bolsonaro, who presided over a surge of destruction in the Amazon rainforest.

The former job could go to Lula’s one-time environment minister Marina Silva, credited with curbing deforestation in the 2000s.

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In a key gesture, the president-elect will make his return to the international stage at the COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt, where he will arrive on November 14, advisers said.

Silva, who will travel with him, told newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo: “The climate issue is now a strategic priority at the highest level.”

International

Two killed in shooting at restaurant near Frankfurt Airport

Two people were shot dead early Tuesday at a restaurant in Raunheim, near Frankfurt Airport, according to local police.

Preliminary findings indicate that an armed individual entered the establishment at around 03:45 local time (02:45 GMT) and opened fire on the victims, who died at the scene from their injuries.

The suspect fled and remains at large, while the motive behind the shooting is still unclear, German media reported. Authorities have launched a large-scale search operation.

International

U.S. counterterrorism chief resigns over opposition to war in Iran

Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced Tuesday that he has resigned from his post, citing his opposition to the ongoing war in Iran.

In a post on X, Kent said he could not, “in good conscience,” support the conflict, arguing that Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the United States. He also claimed that the war was driven by pressure from Israel and its lobbying influence in Washington.

In a resignation letter addressed to Donald Trump, Kent alleged that at the start of the current administration, senior Israeli officials and influential figures in U.S. media carried out a disinformation campaign that undermined the “America First” platform and fostered pro-war sentiment aimed at triggering a conflict with Iran.

Kent further stated that he could not support sending a new generation of Americans to “fight and die in a war that provides no benefit to the American people and does not justify the cost in American lives.”

Since the United States and Israel launched attacks against Iran on February 28, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed, while 10 others have been seriously wounded and around 200 have sustained minor injuries, according to a report published by The Wall Street Journal.

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International

German president warns Iran war could spread and disrupt Strait of Hormuz

The president of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warned Monday that the war involving Iran could expand and further disrupt shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz. He urged a swift end to hostilities between Iran, United States and Israel.

Speaking in Panama City during a joint appearance with Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, Steinmeier said available information suggests Iran has significant capacity to disrupt maritime traffic through the key oil route.

“Iran has considerable potential to interfere with shipping through the Strait of Hormuz,” Steinmeier said through an interpreter. “We should therefore reach an end to the hostilities as soon as possible and call on all parties involved to make that happen.”

The remarks came during Steinmeier’s visit to Panama, the first by a German president to the Central American nation.

The German leader described the possibility of the conflict spreading as “very dangerous,” saying recent developments indicate that such a scenario cannot be ruled out.

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Over the weekend, U.S. President Donald Trump urged allied nations to help ensure safe passage for ships through the Strait of Hormuz after Iran moved to block the waterway in response to U.S. strikes. However, several allies—particularly in Europe—have shown little support for the proposal.

“Some are very enthusiastic, others are not, and some are countries we have helped for many years,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We have protected them from terrible external threats, and they’re not that enthusiastic. And the level of enthusiasm is important to me.”

Meanwhile, Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said the Strait of Hormuz falls “outside NATO’s scope” and stressed that “the war involving Iran is not Europe’s war.”