Brazil’s election results are in, and the Brazilian people have given Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva the chance to lead the country as president for the next four years.
It’s an opportunity to reverse the serious setbacks of Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency, but Lula’s to-do list when he begins the job in January is substantial.
The damage Bolsonaro has inflicted on the democratic system and the rule of law, for example, is deeply worrying. His choice for the country’s top prosecutor became widely criticized for appearing to make decisions favoring Bolsonaro and weakening the fight against corruption.
Lula will need to ensure the independence of the Prosecutor’s Office.
President-Elect Lula should also promote accountability in all Congressional budget appropriations and end the so-called “secret budget” supported by President Bolsonaro, which redirected billions of dollars to congressional spending projects with virtually no transparency.
These are all critical issues, but in the wake of the election, perhaps most international attention is focused on the environment, with the country being the chief guardian of the Amazon.
It’s hard to overestimate the damage Bolsonaro did to agencies tasked with protecting the environment and Indigenous rights, with which the health of the Amazon is inextricably linked. Lula will now have to strengthen law enforcement to fight rain forest destruction, as well as threats and attacks against the forest defenders who live there.
In his first public statement after winning the election, President-Elect Lula seemed to say a lot of the right things. He called for national unity and dialogue between the executive, Congress, and the judiciary. He committed to combatting hunger, poverty, violence against women and Indigenous people, racism, and Amazon deforestation.
Sounds good. But reversing the disaster of the Bolsonaro years will take a lot more than words.
We’ll be watching.