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

Peruvian presidential candidate Napoleón Becerra dies in campaign road accident

Presidential candidate Napoleón Becerra, representing the Partido de los Trabajadores y Emprendedores (PTE) in Peru, died in a traffic accident while traveling to a campaign event, local authorities confirmed Sunday.

Becerra, who also served as president of the centrist political party, ranked among the lowest in opinion polls in a crowded field of more than 30 candidates competing in the presidential election scheduled for April 12.

Recent surveys place Rafael López Aliaga at the top of voter preferences.

The accident occurred near the town of Ayacucho, in southern Peru, when the vehicle carrying the candidate overturned for reasons that remain under investigation.

“The candidate Becerra has died,” Balvin Huamani, mayor of the district of Pilpichaca, told RPP radio.

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According to Huamani, he personally transported the 61-year-old candidate to a local health center, where doctors confirmed his death.

The Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE) expressed condolences over Becerra’s passing and wished a speedy recovery to the three people who were traveling with him and were injured in the crash.

International

Noboa intensifies anti-cartel crackdown as violence persists in Ecuador

A close ally of Washington, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has pursued a hardline security strategy against cocaine cartels for more than two years, yet homicide, disappearance and extortion rates remain high across the country.

Between Sunday night and the morning of March 31, Ecuador’s armed forces will launch a “very strong offensive” with “advisory support” from the United States, Interior Minister John Reimberg announced Tuesday.

The government has kept details of the operation confidential and has not confirmed whether U.S. troops will be deployed on Ecuadorian soil, as has occurred at times during Noboa’s administration.

As part of the security measures, residents in the coastal provinces of Guayas, Los Ríos, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, and El Oro will be subject to a nightly curfew from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. local time for the next two weeks.

“We are in a war,” Reimberg said, urging citizens to remain indoors. “Do not take risks. Stay home and allow the security forces and our allies to do the work that must be done.”

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Although Ecuador does not produce cocaine, it has become a major departure point for drugs heading to the United States. Meanwhile, the violence associated with trafficking has increasingly affected the local population.

Bordering the world’s largest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has gone from being considered a relatively peaceful country to recording one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America—52 killings per 100,000 inhabitants—according to the **Observatory of Organized Crime.

International

Peruvian presidential candidate proposes death penalty amid crime surge

Peru is facing an unprecedented surge in crime ahead of its presidential election scheduled for April 12, with violence fueled by extortion networks and a wave of contract killings linked to organized crime.

Police data show that 2,200 homicides tied to organized crime were recorded in 2025, while extortion complaints increased by 19%, underscoring the growing security crisis in the South American nation.

Amid this backdrop, presidential candidate Álvarez has proposed reinstating the death penalty if elected, arguing that extreme measures are needed to curb the violence.

To implement the proposal, Álvarez said Peru would withdraw from the American Convention on Human Rights—also known as the Pact of San José—which the country signed in 1978. The agreement prevents member states that have abolished capital punishment from reinstating it.

Currently, Peruvian law only allows the death penalty in cases of treason during wartime.

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“We have to leave the Pact of San José and apply the death penalty in Peru because those miserable criminals don’t deserve to live,” Álvarez told AFP during a campaign stop at a market in Callao, the port city neighboring Lima.

“An iron fist against those criminals,” he added, proposing to declare hitmen as military targets.

During the campaign event, Álvarez walked through stalls selling vegetables, groceries, and fish, greeting vendors while musicians played cumbia music nearby.

The 62-year-old candidate, who spent more than four decades working in television as a comedian, is a newcomer to politics and is running for president under the País para Todos party.

Polls place him fifth in voter preference with nearly 4% support in a fragmented race featuring 36 candidates.