Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Lula returns to Brasilia with a left-wing speech

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva returned to Brasilia as president this Wednesday. Although elected president, he begins to govern, not just by words, but by deeds, as in the negotiation of the 2023 Budget, for example.

Back in Brasília, his first speech was from the left, so to speak, for simplicity’s sake. It was nothing very different from what Lula said in so many campaigns. But it was not like what he did in his governments (2003-2010).

Lula looked elated, as if he was fed up with being told he can’t spend. In his speech, in fact, an interview, he said that a lot of spending is actually an investment, that the 500-year social debt has to be paid and that it makes no sense to “save” to “pay interest to bankers”. A transcript of what he said follows below.

The government has barely begun to be assembled and who knows what Lula will decide to do, especially in terms of the economic program. He may come to set points and fine-tune ideas with his future Minister of Finance. But the president is Lula and his government, for now, is just him. With Brasilia’s first speech, he seems to say to those who will come that he doesn’t have much patience for the talk of “austerity” — of “austericide”, as certain people on the left say.

Were they just words on some sort of platform? Alongside Lula, Geraldo Alckmin. Close behind, Gleisi Hoffmann, president of the PT, and Aloízio Mercadante, technical coordinator of the transition. Senator Randolfe Rodrigues (Rede-AP) and elected senator Flávio Dino (PSB-MA) were also there.

These were the words of the president-elect, who had spent the day in Powers diplomacy. More than that, a day of political negotiations with the president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), who can determine the size of the political support that Lula 3 can have, and with the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, of the PSD almost ally (but not whole).

Anyone who heard Brasília’s first speech, inside and outside the transition team, “took notes”.

A bank executive who said he was optimistic last week sent a message. “For now, I’m selling last week’s optimism. Low.” Another sent an excerpt of the video with Lula’s speech with a dry caption: “Toughness”. A third said that Mercadante “seems to have more influence than previously thought”.

It’s all to be done, speculation is huge, money people are volatile. Lula bites and blows, there are pressures and counter-pressures of different kinds and sources. But in two days, the weather changed. PT members are more excited (apart from those who feel wronged for not being in the “transition”). Outsiders put their beards and money in the water.

What Lula said:

“I’ll take office on the first day. If it’s up to me, on the second, we’re already putting work to work because we need to generate jobs, distribute income and make this country grow again. We can’t cry, ‘ah, you know , will spend’. I want to say the following: a lot of things that people say is spent, I think it’s an investment. Health is an investment, because investing in a person so they don’t get sick is an investment. Popular Pharmacy is an investment for taking care of people’s lives. Investing in education is not an expense, it’s an investment. So we need to change some nomenclatures, because all we want to do is ‘spent, is spent, is spent’. What for? To save money to pay interest to bankers? No. We need to have [levar em conta] a social debt. We have a 500-year historical social debt with poor people and we, as we did once, are going to try to start paying it off. I don’t know if we’ll pay all of it, but we’ll start paying.”