The likely Lula-Alckmin ticket for the 2022 presidential election caused a great stir in public debate.
Heated disputes were fought between those who felt the potential of the double, those against Lula, and those who were disappointed with an alliance of the left with a representative of the centre-right.
Among Lula’s supporters, criticism came in two directions.
Some wrote that Geraldo Alckmin would not bring votes for Lula. On the contrary, the former president could even lose support.
Others focused their remarks on ideological aspects, complaining that the former governor of Tucano would prevent Lula from making a more left-wing government, having to give in to a more conservative policy.
I think both criticisms are wrong.
Vices do not bring votes for presidential candidates, at least substantively.
It is not known that Fernando Collor, the first president elected after redemocratization, surprised everyone because of Itamar Franco, his running mate.
Nor that Fernando Henrique Cardoso won two elections in the first round thanks to the votes of Marco Maciel, or that Lula made history in 2002 and 2006 because of businessman José Alencar.
Not even that Dilma Rousseff has been elected twice with the help of Michel Temer, a politician who ran the risk of not even being elected if he was thrown into a race for federal deputy.
Choosing the vice president is a hit and a nod to different things: television time, campaign funding, signaling to sectors that see the candidate in a bad light, party alliances to form a basis for the future government, etc.
Alckmin, from the electoral point of view, probably adds little. But when he leaves the race for the government of São Paulo, in which he is the favorite, he opens the opportunity for the Workers’ Party (PT) to dream of governing the richest state in the federation for the first time.
A strong PT candidacy in São Paulo supporting Lula, on the other hand, can generate significant electoral gains. And, if none of that works, without taking votes away from the PT in the presidential elections.
Even the most critical of the alliance’s left will not fail to vote for Lula.
If the ex-president doesn’t win from the electoral point of view “strictu sensu”, he doesn’t lose either. And as one does not measure intensity, the vote of those who were dissatisfied will have the same weight as those who are indifferent and those who are enthusiastic about the alliance.
Regarding critics for ideological reasons, I think they are not realizing the gravity of the moment and the importance of this election in 2022.
We are not just living the nightmare of a bad government, probably the worst in Brazilian history; We are in the midst of a crisis of democracy itself.
This crisis begins with the bad loser Aécio Neves in 2014, who did not recognize his defeat to Dilma, goes through an impeachment based on false accusations and culminates with the election of an unprepared representative of the extreme right, Jair Bolsonaro.
All this accompanied by Lava Jato, a judicial operation in which a judge of first instance and a band of prosecutors, working in collusion, put the policy in the dock without observing due process of law.
The institutions were not able, therefore, to stop this sad process of degradation of democracy.
Neither the STF nor Congress, for example, were able to prevent this avalanche of excesses. On the contrary, these two institutions, for many years, were complicit in the process of democratic deterioration.
Not even a two-round electoral system, a rule capable of preventing the victory of the extreme right in countries like France, could hold the election of former captain Bolsonaro.
A broad front for democracy
When institutions fail, Ziblatt and Levitsky teach, it’s up to politicians to stop extremists and those opposed to democracy. Brazilian institutions were not enough to stop this process of political degradation.
Even Lula’s candidacy in the 2022 election, which is gaining the air of a favorite, was only possible after the leak of dialogues between members of the Lava Jato de Curitiba that revealed the frames to ensure the arrest of the former president and prevent him from compete in 2018.
It was a hacker, not institutions, that gave the democratic process a new chance.
The STF, always attentive to the political situation, realized that keeping Lula in prison and not guaranteeing his political rights, after the undeniable demonstration of bad faith by the then judge Sergio Moro and the attorney of the Republic Deltan Dallagnol, was unsustainable.
In this key, the alliance between Lula and Alckmin is positive. A broad front against undemocratic forces is welcome, especially when institutions cannot bar candidates at the extreme ends of the political spectrum.
The Brazilian system encourages negotiations. In addition to the two-round election, which forces the repositioning of all candidates around two names, the Brazilian Congress has never offered presidents majorities based on a single party, demanding conversations, concessions and fronts between different parties.
Alliance is the rule in Brazil, not the exception. Lula governed like this, even with the support of the centrão, a euphemism for a group of right-wing parties that survives thanks to their adherence to governments.
This need to make alliances may have prevented Lula from governing based solely on his “sincere preferences”, but it did not prevent him from creating an administration that was highly evaluated and responsible for innovative and distributive initiatives.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion on the alliance, and Lula has been wrong at other times – I think he was a better name than Dilma for the 2014 elections.
But let’s not lose the context we are facing. More conservative vices on PT slates are nothing new.
A vice candidate from a party that represented the historical counterpoint to the PT and which has already contested an election against Lula is good news. It is a sign that above ideological differences is democracy.
This was not noticed in 2018, with Ciro Gomes hiding in Paris and Fernando Henrique Cardoso on the fence in the second round between PT Fernando Haddad and the extreme right led by Bolsonaro.
The alliance is an important correction of the mistake that democratic forces made in the last election. Better late than never.
Source: Folha
