Explained: The Deep-rooted Challenges Brazil's Lula Faces

Lula has returned to the presidency after the historic Brazil 2022 runoff that presented two antagonistic country models. The leader of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party) won 50.9 percent to the incumbent's 49.1 percent. That is 2,125,334 votes more than his rival.

“They tried to bury me alive, but here I am”, said Lula, who was imprisoned due to conviction in a corruption case, while addressing a huge crowd after winning the presidential elections in the Sunday runoff.

He will have to face tough challenges after he sits at Planalto Palace (presidential office), particularly because he will have to deal with a Congress controlled by the opposition, which significantly limits what he can do, and a deeply polarized polity with societal problems such as increased poverty, precarious employment and much more.

Thirty-three million people do not have enough to eat every day in Brazil. This social issue will be a priority for Lula upon his return to the Planalto, if his speeches and promises during the rally are to be believed.

Long lines of people waiting to receive meat bones outside butcher shops in Rio de Janeiro or Cuiabá (Mato Grosso), as well as in cities in the poor northeast: that is the image of hunger in Brazil, a nation in which the number of people facing food insecurity has gone up instead of going down. 

This is quite striking as, thirty-three million people facing food insecurity every day in a country that had left the hunger map in 2014, is unprecedented in any significant country. 

The situation worsened during the pandemic,due to the delayed purchase of vaccines. According to government data, 700,000 people died.

With 700,000 deaths, Brazil is today the second country in Latin America in terms of deaths from Covid in relation to its population, after Peru.

The Americanisation of politics - with supporters of one candidate feeling that the election has been stolen, something that began in America back in 2016, only undermines the social cohesion of Brazil, a diverse nation which anyway did not have that much social cohesion to begin with, as is the case with most diverse nations. 

Brazil is a so-called 'upper middle income country', however the reality of the economy tells a different story. Any downturn in commodity prices severely affects the country's per capita GDP.

As a result of its reliance on commodities to fuel the economy, Brazil has not attempted to boost the manufacturing sector of its economy. It has underinvested in human capital as well. 

The country’s GDP per capita declined 43 percent from $13,245 in 2011 to $7,518 in 2021.

Reversing this requires a structural change in its economy and weaning off the nation from its dependence on commodities.

However, Riyadh can attempt to restructure its economy because the crown prince wields political authority that is quite unparalleled in democratic nations.

In Brazil, restructuring the economy will be much more challenging because not only is the Brazilian president not as powerful as an absolute monarch in waiting, this Brazilian president will also face a roadblack in the legislature. 

 “I will govern for 215 million Brazilians…and not just for those who voted for me. There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people—one great nation,” Lula told a crowd after his election. “It is in nobody’s interests to live in a country that is divided and in a constant state of war," he added.

Leaders of a nation make such speeches when they know they are leading a very divided society.

No one in the Netherlands, South Korea and Japan has to talk about unity so much, because there is no need for such rhetoric in homogenous nations.

Brazil has often been talked about as a nation that has great potential but never quite manages to live up to its potential. The recent presidential elections won't change this reality. 

Leaving the economy aside, even on symbolic issues Lula will face resistance. Lula has pledged to install a ministry for Brazil’s Indigenous people, a welcome step, but this will be used against him, as an excuse to block his policies in the congress. "Lula is a leftist woke", is an all too plausible line of attack, in a nation that constantly keeps gazing at America. 

Lula, the first president in Brazil’s democracy to win a third term, won in part due to his social programs’ track-record, but he will now struggle to finance those programmes. 

Lula does have a potential way out of the problems he faces. He can collaborate with Brazil’s Centrão (which translates to - Big Centre) parliamentary bloc, all he has to do is not stand in the way of Chamber of Deputies President Arthur Lira’s reelection bid. 

Explaining Centrãoto those who are not students of Latin America can be a tricky challenge. The most concise description was written by Bryan Harris of Financial Times.

"The Centrão encompasses a handful of political parties and 220 out of the 513 federal lawmakers, known as deputados. It traces its origins to the end of the military dictatorship in the late 1980s when parliamentarians banded together to support weak, democratically elected presidents. Since then it has become embedded in Brazilian politics, offering support to governments of any stripe, left or right, in exchange for plum political posts and the resources to support its electoral machines in home constituencies," Harris wrote.

Without a deal with them, Lula will struggle to govern.