International
Tough choices as Brazil’s Lula gets down to business
| 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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
Paraguay summons Brazilian ambassador over Itaipú espionage scandal
Paraguay summoned the Brazilian ambassador in Asunción on Tuesday to demand “explanations” and called its own representative in Brasília for consultations following Brazil’s acknowledgment of an espionage operation. The Brazilian government, led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, attributed the operation to the previous administration.
The surveillance effort aimed to uncover Paraguay’s position in now-suspended negotiations with Brazil regarding the pricing of electricity from the binational Itaipú hydroelectric plant, according to reports in the Brazilian press.
The Brazilian government “categorically denied any involvement in the intelligence operation,” stating in a Foreign Ministry communiqué on Monday that the espionage was carried out under former President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration (2019-2023).
“The operation was authorized by the previous government in June 2022 and was annulled by the interim director of the (state intelligence agency) ABIN on March 27, 2023, as soon as the current administration became aware of it,” Brazil’s government asserted.
Paraguay’s Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez announced that Brazilian Ambassador José Antonio Marcondes de Carvalho was summoned “to provide detailed explanations” regarding the operation. Additionally, Paraguay recalled its diplomatic representative in Brasília “to report on aspects related to the intelligence activity conducted by Brazil regarding Paraguay’s government affairs.”
International
Elon Musk to step down as government advisor, per Trump insiders
President Donald Trump has informed his inner circle that Elon Musk will be stepping down from his role as a government advisor, according to a report by Politico today.
Citing three individuals close to Trump, Politico states that the president is pleased with Musk’s leadership at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), where he has implemented significant budget cuts. However, both have agreed that it is time for Musk to return to his businesses and support Trump from a different position outside the government.
A senior administration official told Politico that Musk will likely maintain an informal advisory role and continue to be an occasional visitor to the White House. Another source warned that anyone thinking Musk will completely disappear from Trump’s circle is “deluding themselves.”
According to the sources, this transition is expected to coincide with the end of Musk’s tenure as a “special government employee,” a temporary status that exempts him from certain ethics and conflict-of-interest regulations. This 130-day period is set to expire in late May or early June.
International
Milei vows to make Argentina so strong that Falkland Islanders “choose” to join
Argentine President Javier Milei reaffirmed his country’s claim over the Falkland Islands (known as the Islas Malvinas in Argentina) and praised the role of the nation’s armed forces during a ceremony marking the “Veterans and Fallen Soldiers of the Malvinas War Day,” commemorating 43 years since the 1982 conflict with the United Kingdom.
Argentina continues to assert sovereignty over the islands, arguing that Britain unlawfully seized them in 1833.
“If sovereignty over the Malvinas is the issue, we have always made it clear that the most important vote is the one cast with one’s feet. We hope that one day, the Malvinas residents will choose to vote with their feet and join us,” Milei stated.
“That is why we aim to become a global power—so much so that they would prefer to be Argentine, making deterrence or persuasion unnecessary. This is why we have embarked on a path of liberation, working to make Argentina the freest country in the world and once again the nation with the highest GDP per capita on the planet,” he added.
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