‘This nightmare is over’: Lula vows to pull
Brazil out of Bolsonaro’s era of ‘devastation’
Leftwinger promises environmental protections and
social progress as he’s sworn in as president
Tom
Phillips in Brasília
Sun 1 Jan
2023 19.32 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/01/brazil-lula-presidency-new-era
A tearful
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has vowed to haul Brazil out of Jair Bolsonaro’s era
of “devastation” and kickstart a new phase of reconciliation, environmental
preservation and social justice after being sworn in as president.
Fighting
back tears as he addressed tens of thousands of supporters who had packed the
plaza outside the presidential palace in Brasília, Lula declared the end of
“one of the worst periods in Brazilian history” under the former far-right
president.
“[It was]
an era of darkness, uncertainty and great suffering … but this nightmare is
over,” Lula said, vowing to reunite the bitterly divided South American country
and govern not just for those who elected him in October’s historic election,
but all 215 million Brazilians.
“It is in
nobody’s interest for our country to be in a constant state of ferment,” Lula
said, urging citizens to rebuild friendships destroyed by years of hate speech
and lies. “There aren’t two Brazils. We are one single people.”
The veteran
leftwinger, a former factory worker who was president from 2003 to 2010, broke
down as he outlined plans to wage war on hunger, which he called “the gravest
crime committed against the Brazilian people”.
“Women are
rummaging through the rubbish to feed their children,” said Lula, 77. “Entire
families are sleeping out in the open, exposed to the cold, rain and fear.”
Brazil’s
new president did not mention his right-wing predecessor by name. But he
excoriated the damage done by Bolsonaro’s four-year administration during which
nearly 700,000 Brazilians died of a mishandled Covid outbreak, millions were
plunged into poverty, and Amazon deforestation soared.
“No
amnesty! No amnesty!” the crowd bellowed of Bolsonaro, who many want brought to
justice for sabotaging Covid containment efforts and vaccination against an
illness he called “a little flu”.
“Bolsonaro
killed my son. He was 20 when he died,” said one man in the crowd, Waldecir da
Costa, his hands shaking with anger as he held up a photograph of his late
child on his phone. “I want him to pay for everything he did.”
Addressing
congress shortly after being sworn in on Sunday afternoon, Lula said the
“criminal behaviour of a denialist and obscurantist government that treated
people’s lives with callousness” during the pandemic should not go unpunished.
Bolsonaro
took refuge in the US on Friday, refusing to hand the presidential sash to his
leftist rival as is democratic tradition.
Instead,
during a profoundly symbolic and emotionally charged ceremony outside the
presidential palace, that task was performed by Aline Sousa, a black rubbish
collector from Brazil’s capital.
Lula strode
up the ramp into the palace flanked by eight representatives of Brazil’s
diverse society including one of its most revered Indigenous leaders, Raoni
Metuktire, a rap DJ and metalworker and a 10-year-old child.
Vivi Reis,
a leftist politician from the Amazon, shed tears as she watched Lula’s
entrance. “After so much tragedy and a government that plunged Brazil into
destitution and hunger, we now see that we have overcome this. We are here, we
resisted – and we have won.”
Huge crowds
of ecstatic Lula supporters flooded the streets of Brazil’s capital to
celebrate the sensational political revival of a man who just over three years
ago was languishing in prison on corruption charges that were later annulled.
“We feel dizzyingly
unfathomable relief,” said the journalist Arimatea Lafayette, 59, as red-clad
revellers marched towards the congress building on Sunday morning to toast
Lula’s return and the downfall of Bolsonaro, who has taken up residence in the
Florida mansion of an MMA fighter. It is unclear when he plans to return.
“We’ve been
through four years of terror and now we feel free,” added Lafayette, who had
flown in from the north-eastern state of Alagoas wearing a T-shirt stamped with
Lula’s face.
Franceli
Anjos, a 60-year-old feminist, had travelled 55 hours by road from the Amazon
city of Santarém to witness the long-awaited end of Bolsonaro’s chaotic reign.
“I’m convinced a new spring has arrived,” she said.
Lucas
Rodrigues’s hands trembled with emotion as he described his delight at Lula’s
sensational comeback, exactly 20 years after the former union leader became
Brazil’s first working-class president in January 2003.
“The whole
of Brazil is here – that’s what Lula’s capable of,” the 25-year-old said after
stepping off a bus from the southern state of Santa Catarina, where he is part
of the landless workers’ movement.
Lula’s
American biographer John D French said he believed that after declaring war on
hunger – a hallmark of Lula’s first government – the new president’s top
priority would be reuniting a bitterly divided nation after a poisonous
election campaign marred by violence.
“I think
what he’d like would be a generalised reconciliation … and a standing down of
the levels of conflict,” French said, although he warned that would be
difficult given the toxic chasm between Lulistas and Bolsonaristas.
“The notion
that everything is going to be roses and peaches and cream [is misguided]. I
think this is going to be a very conflictual period.”
Bolsonaro’s
narrow defeat in October’s election – which he lost by 2m votes – sent a wave
of relief over progressive Brazilians desperate to see the back of a man they
accused of wrecking Brazil’s environment and place in the world.
French said
that relief was reminiscent of Democrats’ reaction to Donald Trump’s 2020
demise. “[People were] like: ‘Phew, OK – now things can go back to normal.’
“But they
didn’t go back to normal in the US. Nothing is normal politically. And it’s not
going to return to some sort of placid normality [in Brazil, either].”
Still, the
mere prospect of a fresh start under a progressive and inclusive Lula
government – which has vowed to fight environmental crime and named an
Indigenous woman to lead Brazil’s first-ever ministry for Indigenous people –
has thrilled supporters who have flocked to the capital.
“I know it
won’t be easy for Lula to rebuild everything that Bolsonarismo has destroyed.
But I feel hopeful. If there’s anyone who enjoys the popular support and
international respect from leaders around the planet needed to rebuild Brazil’s
relationships with the world, it’s Lula,” said Diogo Virgílio Teixeira, a 41-year-old
anthropologist from São Paulo.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário