Fwd: Lula update: Whiplash between social democrats and neo-fascists

[Jai Sen]

Monday, November 11, 2019

Brazil in movement…, Justice in movement…, Freedoms in movement…

[It’s difficult to know what kind of post to do, after an event of the magnitude of Lula’s release on Friday – with all its possible consequences for Brazil, for Latin America, and indeed for the world at this juncture…. And given also that it is, after all is said and done, only a conditional release, and with the cards stacked against him. 

[But it has not been difficult to decide (what kind of post to do); predictably, Patrick Bond has again come up with and posted a superb collection of articles.  So here that is.  Thanks Patrick :

Brazilian Former President Lula Freed from Prison

Democracy Now!

Brazil’s Lula blames elites for ‘coup’ in Bolivia : Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico also stand in solidarity with Morales

Vakkas Dogantekin

Released Lula in for greatest fight of his life

Pepe Escobar

Lula’s release could be a significant turning point for Brazil and for global politics

Vashna Yaganath

Freed from Jail, Lula’s Ready to Fight in Latin America

Vinícius Andrade and Jorgelina do Rosario, Bloomberg

How Will Brazil’s Market React To Ex-President Lula’s “Freedom” 

Kenneth Rapoza Senior Contributor

Imagining A Worse Case Scenario

Associated Press

Lula Gets Ready for Clash With Bolsonaro

[unidentified]

The West’s left-right battle lines run through Brazil

Ishaan Tharoor 

            JS

fwd

Begin forwarded message:

From: Patrick Bond <pb...@mail.ngo.za>

Subject: [Debate-List] (Fwd) Lula update: whiplash between social democrats and neo-fascists

Date: November 11, 2019 at 2:35:51 PM EST

To: DEBATE <debat...@fahamu.org>, brics-wkgp <brics...@googlegroups.com>, "safis-solida...@googlegroups.com" <safis-solida...@googlegroups.com>

(Lula has created socio-political-economic schizophrenia, making stark what Pepe Escobar describes below as the contrast between social democracy and neo-fascism; more power to Lula and a resurgent Brazilian left - with all due caution about whether the balance of forces justify such hopefulness based upon the fate of a single politician, no matter how superlative his skills. 

    Certainly when, in early 1989, I interviewed him on the U.S. Pacifica radio network I worked for then, his answer to my question was stunning: "You just came from the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, so what did you tell them?" Lula: "If they don't give up their rings, we'll chop off their fingers." 

    But that Lula changed dramatically in the 14 subsequent years of running for office as his political agenda moderated and his hunt for the patriotic bourgeoisie found temporary satisfaction, from 2003-10 when he ruled with the world's highest presidential popularity polling.

    His release leaves capitalists annoyed and nervous. On Friday, “Brazil was the worst performing emerging market thanks to that Supreme Court ruling. The Brazilian real weakened to its lowest level since September 14, 2018, hitting R$4.17 to the dollar. Wall Street may be right to view Lula as a has-been, with little ability to rabble rouse beyond his traditional union-base, a base that saw many vote Bolsonaro in 2018. However, no one should doubt Lula’s connections within the left-wing activist movements of South America like Grupo de Puebla and their ability to agitate against the right-leaning governments.”

    The fear: “Lula gains some surprising traction and manages to get people out into the streets waving their red PT and Communist Party flags. Bank windows are smashed. Brazil’s stock market crashes by a good 10,000 points, and the Brazilian real goes to R$4.25 to the dollar in a heartbeat.”

    Pepe Escobar is as always ultra-provocative, and hopeful that BRICS visitors on Wed-Thurs can stage a secret meeting: “Putin and Xi are Lula’s real top allies on the global stage. They have been literally waiting for Lula, as diplomats have confirmed to me over and over again… If Lula follows a restricted script of merely reorganizing the Left, in Brazil, Latin America and even the Global South, the military system currently in place will swallow him whole all over again. The Left is infiltrated – everywhere.”)

 

Brazilian Former President Lula Freed from Prison

 

Democracy Now!

 

In Brazil, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was greeted by crowds of his supporters as he walked free from jail on Friday.

 

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: “You have no idea of the significance for me to be here with you. I, who my whole life talked with the Brazilian people, never thought that today I could be here talking with men and women who, during the past 580 days, were here saying, ‘Good morning, Lula,’ ‘Good afternoon, Lula,’ yelling, ‘Good night, Lula,’ no matter if it was raining, if it was 40 degrees or zero degrees. … I want to tell you that from here I’m going to São Paulo. Tomorrow I have a meeting with the metallurgical union. And after it, the doors of Brazil will be open for me to go around the country.”

 

His freedom came after the Supreme Court ended mandatory imprisonment for people convicted of a crime who lost their first appeal. He had been imprisoned for a year and a half after he was convicted of accepting a beachside apartment from an engineering firm vying for contracts at the state oil company Petrobras. He denies the charges. Many of Lula’s supporters say his conviction and jailing ahead of Brazil’s 2018 presidential election, in which Lula was the front-runner, was politically motivated. His jailing cleared the way for the election of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsanaro. Click here to see our full interview with Lula just before he was imprisoned.

 

***

 

Brazil’s Lula blames elites for ‘coup’ in Bolivia

 

Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico also stand in solidarity with Morales

 

Vakkas Dogantekin          | 11.11.2019

 

ANKARA

 

Former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva has blamed the elites of Bolivia for the resignation of its president Evo Morales.

 

“I just heard that there was a coup d’état in Bolivia and that fellow @evoespueblo [Evo Morales] was forced to resign. It is unfortunate that Latin America has an economic elite that does not know how to live with democracy and the social inclusion of the poorest,” he said on Twitter late Sunday. 

 

The iconic leader of Worker’s Party, who ruled Brazil from 2003 to 2010, was released from prison on Friday after Brazilian Supreme Court decided to end mandatory imprisonment for convicted criminals after they lose their first appeal, which led to the release of dozens of high-profile convicts, including Lula. 

 

The government of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega also issued a statement in support of Morales, who stepped down on Sunday on the call of the country’s army chief Williams Kaliman amid protests over a disputed election on Oct. 20.

 

“The Government of Nicaragua denounces and strongly condemns the coup d’etat that was realized today,” the socialist government said.

 

“We express our rejection and repudiation of fascist practices that ignore the constitution, laws and institutionalism that govern the democratic life of nations,” the statement added. 

 

Russia, Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba and Mexico have also stood in solidarity with Morales, calling the circumstances in which he resigned a “coup”.

 

Mexico on Sunday said it was offering asylum to Morales after 20 government officials and lawmakers had sought refuge at its embassy in La Paz.

 

In a statement Sunday, Morales said he resigned to prevent possible harm to the opposition and Bolivian people and underlined that he did not have any reason to flee the country.

 

Stressing that he would continue fighting for peace and equality, he said: “This doesn’t end here.”

 

Morales, a former cocalero [coca leaf grower] activist, said he ruled the country for over 13 years and those who lost against him in elections accused him of dictatorship.

 

Born to an indigenous Aymara family of farmers in Isallawi, Orinoca Canton, Morales undertook a basic education and spent most of his life defending the rights of campesinos (farmers) against imperialism.

 

Bolivia has been mired in political unrest following alleged irregularities in presidential elections held Oct. 20 in which international monitoring organizations claimed to have found the manipulation of the voting system.

 

Morales, who has been at the helm since 2006, received 47.8% of the vote and secured victory in the first round of the polls.

 

Carlos Mesa, leader of the main opposition Revolutionary Left Front party, said he would not recognize Morales’ victory, claiming there was “fraud” in the vote count.

 

***

 

Released Lula in for greatest fight of his life

 

Better not mess with the former Brazilian president; Putin and Xi are his real top allies in the Global Left

 

By Pepe Escobar

 

Asia Times

 

He’s back. With a bang.

 

Only two days after his release from a federal prison in Curitiba, southern Brazil, following a narrow 6×5 decision by the Supreme Court, former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva delivered a fiery, 45-minute long speech in front of the Metal Workers Union in Sao Bernardo, outside of Sao Paulo, and drawing on his unparalleled political capital, called all Brazilians to stage nothing short of a social revolution.

 

When my colleagues Mauro Lopes, Paulo Leite and myself interviewed Lula at the federal prison, it was his Day 502 in a cell. by August, it was impossible to predict that release would happen on Day 580, in early November.

 

His first speech to the nation after the prison saga – which is far from over – could never be solemn; in fact he promised a detailed address for the near future. What he did, in his trademark conversationalist style, was to immediately go on the offensive taking down a long list of every possible enemy in the book: those who have mired Brazil into an “anti-people agenda.” In terms of a fully improvised, passionate political address, this is already anthology material.

 

Lula detailed the current “terrible conditions” for Brazilian workers. He ripped to pieces the economic program – basically a monster sell-out – of Finance Minister Paulo Guedes, a Chicago boy and Pinochetist who’s applying the same failed hardcore neoliberal prescriptions now being denounced and scorned every day in the streets of Chile.

 

He detailed how the Brazilian right wing openly bet on neo-fascism, which is the form that neoliberalism recently took in Brazil. He blasted mainstream media, in the form of the so far all-powerful, ultra-reactionary Globo empire. In a stance of semiotic genius, Lula pointed to Globo’s helicopter hovering over the masses gathered for the speech, implying the organization is too cowardly to get close to him on ground level.

 

And, significantly, he got right into the heart of the Bolsonaro question: the militias. It’s no secret to informed Brazilians that the Bolsonaro clan, with its origins in the Veneto, is behaving as a sort of cheap, crude, eschatological carbon copy of the Sopranos, running a system heavy on militias and supported by the Brazilian military. Lula described the president of one of the top nations in the Global South as no less than a militia leader. That will stick – all around the world.

 

So much for “Lula peace and love,” which used to be one of his cherished mottos. No more conciliation. Bolsonaro now has to face real, fierce, solid opposition, and cannot run away from public debate any more.

 

Lula’s prison journey has been an extraordinary liberating experience – turning a previously wounded statesman into a fearless warrior mixing the Tao with Steppenwolf (as sketched in Herman Hesse’s book). He’s free like he’s never been before – and he said so, explicitly. The question is how he will be able to muster the organizational work, the method – and have enough time to change the dire conditions for democratic opposition in Brazil. The whole Global South is watching.

 

At least now the die is cast – and crystal clear: It’s social democracy against neo-fascism. Socially inclusive programs, civil society involved in setting public policy, the fight for  equality versus autocracy, state institutions linked to militias, racism and hate against all minorities. Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, to their credit, have offered Lula their unconditional support. In contrast, Steve Bannon is losing sleep, qualifying Lula as “the poster boy of the globalist Left” across the world.

 

This all goes way beyond Left Populism – as Slavoj Zizek and Chantal Mouffe, among others, have been trying to conceptualize it. Lula, assuming he remains free, is now ready to be the supreme catalyst of an integrated, progressive, “pro-people” New Global Left.

 

‘Cocaine Evangelistan’

 

Now for the really nasty bits.

 

I saw Lula’s speech deep into the night in snow stormed Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan’s capital, in the heart of the steppes, a land trespassed against by the greatest nomad empires in history. The temptation was to picture Lula as a fearless snow leopard roaming the devastated steppes of urban wastelands.

 

Yet snow leopards, crucially, are a species threatened with extinction.

 

After the speech I had serious conversations with two top interlocutors, Bern-based analyst Romulus Maya and anthropologist Piero Leirner, a crack authority on the Brazilian military. The picture they painted was realistically gloomy. Here it is, in a nutshell.

 

When I visited Brasilia last August, several informed sources confirmed that the majority of the Brazilian Supreme Court is bought and paid for. After all, they de facto legitimized all the absurdities that have been taking place in Brazil since 2014. 

 

The absurdities were part of a hyper-complex, slow-motion, rolling hybrid war coup that, under the cloak of a corruption investigation, led to the dismantling of industrial national champions such as Petrobras; the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff on spurious charges; and the jailing of Lula, the work of judge, jury and executioner Sergio Moro, now Bolsonaro’s justice minister, who was completely unmasked by The Intercept’s revelations.

 

The Brazilian military are all over the Supreme Court. Remember, Lula’s liberation happened after a narrow 6 to 5 score. Legally, it was impossible to keep him in prison: the Supreme Court actually bothered to read the Brazilian Constitution.

 

But there are no structural changes whatsoever on the horizon. The project remains a Brazil sell-out – coupled with a thinly veiled military dictatorship. Brazil remains a lowly US colony. So Lula is out of jail essentially because this system allowed it.

 

The military abide by Bolsonaro’s incompetence because he cannot even go to the toilet without permission from General Heleno, the head of the GSI, the Brazilian version of the National Security Council. On Saturday, a scared Bolsonaro asked the top military brass for help after Lula’s release. And crucially, in a tweet, he defined Lula as a “scoundrel” who was “momentarily” free.

 

It’s this “momentarily” that gives away the game. Lula’s murky juridical situation is far from decided. In a harrowing but perfectly plausible short-term scenario, Lula could in fact be sent back to jail – but this time in isolation, in a maximum security federal prison, or even inside a military barracks; after all, he’s a former chief of the armed forces.

 

The full focus of Lula’s defense is now to have Moro disqualified. Anyone with a brain who’s been through The Intercept’s revelations can clearly identify Moro’s corruption. If that happens, and that’s a major “if,” Lula’s already existing convictions will be declared null and void. But there are others lawsuits, eight in total. This is total lawfare territory.

 

The military’s trump card is all about “terrorism” – associated with Lula and the Workers Party. If Lula, according to the harrowing scenario, is sent back to a federal prison, that could be in Brasilia, which not by accident holds the entire leadership of the PCC, or “First Command of the Capital”– the largest Brazilian criminal organization.

 

Maya and Leirner have shown how the PCC is allied with the military and the US Deep State, via their asset Moro, to establish not a Pax Brasilica but what they have described as a “Cocaine Evangelistan” – complete with terrorist false flags blamed on Lula’s command.

 

Leirner has exhaustively studied how the generals, for over a decade on their website, have been trying to associate the PCC with the Workers’ Party. And the association extends to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Hezbollah and the Bolivians. Yes, this all comes straight from His Masters’ Voice’s playbook.

 

Lula, Putin and Xi

 

With the military betting on a strategy of chaos, augmented by Lula’s immense social base all over Brazil fuming about his return to prison and the financial bubble finally burst, rendering the middle classes even poorer, the stage would be set for the ultimate toxic cocktail: social “commotion” allied with “terrorism” associated with “organized crime.”

 

That’s all the military needs to launch an extensive operation to restore “order” and finally force Congress to approve the Brazilian version of the Patriot Act (five separate bills are already making their way in Congress).

 

This is no conspiracy theory. This is a measure of how incendiary Brazil is at the moment, and Western mainstream media will make no effort whatsoever to explain the nasty, convoluted plot for a global audience.

 

Leirner goes to the heart of the matter when he says the current system has no reason to retreat because its side is winning. They are not afraid of Brazil turning into Chile. And even if that ends up happening, they already have a culprit: Lula. Brazilian mainstream media are already releasing trial balloons – blaming Lula for the spike of the US dollar and the rise of inflation.

 

Lula and the Brazilian Left should invest in a full spectrum offensive.

 

The 9^th BRICS summit takes place in Brazil this week. A master counter-coup would be to organize an off-the-record, extremely discreet, heavily securitized meeting among Lula, Putin and Xi Jinping, for instance in an embassy in Brasilia. Putin and Xi are Lula’s real top allies on the global stage. They have been literally waiting for Lula, as diplomats have confirmed to me over and over again.

 

If Lula follows a restricted script of merely reorganizing the Left, in Brazil, Latin America and even the Global South, the military system currently in place will swallow him whole all over again. The Left is infiltrated – everywhere. Now it’s total war. Assuming Lula remains free, he most certainly won’t be allowed to run again for the presidency in 2022. But that’s no problem. He’s got to be extra-bold – and he will be. Better not mess with the Steppenwolf.

 

***

 

Lula’s release could be a significant turning point for Brazil and for global politics

 

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s presidency and charisma constituted a direct challenge to the elitist and racist logic of Brazilian society. This was the primary reason the old white oligarchy wanted to destroy his reputation and to remove him from society. 

 

Vashna Yaganath

 

Lula is Free! 

 

“Those who condemn me without proof know that I am innocent and I governed honestly.

 

“Those who persecute me can do what they want to me, but they will never imprison our dreams.

 

“An affectionate kiss from Lula.”

 

These words were written in a letter to his comrades by the former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, just before handing himself over, on 5 April 2018, to begin a 12-year jail sentence. The charges against Lula were so plainly lacking in any legal credibility that they were roundly condemned by international legal experts of the highest integrity and standing. 

 

The sentence handed down to Lula was the culmination of ongoing political persecution by the growing fascist forces in Brazil. We should not forget that Jair Bolsonaro, the current leader of those forces, is openly nostalgic for the military dictatorship that ruled the country from 1964 to 1985. 

 

On the afternoon of Friday 8 November 2019, Lula was released from prison, where he had been held in solitary confinement, following a ruling by the Federal Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled that any prisoner who had not exhausted their appeals process was to be immediately released. This ruling was not just a historic ruling for Lula but, according to Ana Paula Vargas and Vijay Prashad, “about 5,000 Brazilians — mostly poor and black — can be released based on the Supreme Court’s decision”.

 

“Many of them have not been previously afforded the presumption of innocence, and large numbers of them have been in prison without proper legal defence.” 

 

Since he was first elected to the presidency in 2003, Lula, who began his working life on the streets of Sao Paulo at the age of 12 and eventually became the leader of the metalworkers’ union, was perceived as a profound threat to the white oligarchy that has run Brazil since the days of slavery. From a political base in the metalworkers’ union, Lula won support from the broader working class, including the rural movement of the landless and the movements of the urban poor. A charismatic figure, he developed a unique ability to unite and galvanise the left, and, in office, achieved impressive reductions in poverty and progress against the deep-rooted racism of Brazilian society. The persecution of Lula began in earnest in 2016 when the right-wing forces realised that although Lula had not held the presidency since 2010, he continued to be the figure that could unite the industrial working class, the rural peasantry and the urban poor in a progressive alliance. 

 

To stop the advances of working-class, poor and black Brazilians, the judicial system was captured, contorted and bent into the service of the right-wing white elites. Judge Sérgio Moro led the crusade against Lula, a crusade backed to the hilt by the corporate media houses owned by the old white elites. 

 

Moro began his persecution of Lula via a now-discredited anti-corruption campaign known as Operation Car Wash. Lula constantly affirmed his innocence and no evidence has been provided to show any guilt on his part. In an article published in 2017, international human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC, noted that despite the media onslaught against Lula, 42.7% of Brazilians still believed in his innocence. Robertson also noted the serious flaws in the Brazilian judicial system, flaws that have their roots in Portuguese colonialism: 

 

“Brazil maintains an antiquated system for investigating and judging criminal offences, which it inherited from Portugal in the early 19th century (but which Portugal itself has long since abandoned). This system offers no separation between the role of the investigating judge, who supervises and approves the work of the police and prosecutors, and that of the trial judge, who should hear the case without bias or preconceptions. In Brazil, both of these roles are played by the same person, even when, as in Lula’s case, the investigation has included prejudicial findings against Lula by the judge.” 

 

On 4 June 2019, some of Moro’s correspondence was leaked by Intercept. The leak not only demonstrated that Moro had advised prosecutors on how to deal with Lula but, also, that his actions were politically motivated. It should be recalled that as soon as Jair Bolsonaro, often described as a fascist, came into power at the beginning of 2019 he appointed Moro as the justice and public security minister.

 

The persecution of Lula was not incidental, casual or even solely a matter of personal animus. It had a clear strategic goal and was at the centre of a campaign by the white right-wing elites to restore their power. To them, Lula was not just dangerous because he was a leftist economic reformer sympathetic to trade unions and social movements. Lula was dangerous because he challenged the hegemony of white supremacy and its economic and cultural system. It is important for South Africans to understand that Lula did not simply challenge the old order with radical rhetoric not matched with concrete action. On the contrary, Lula’s government materially built the power of the impoverished, working-class, black and indigenous populations of Brazil. 

 

There are many who argue that Lula should have taken more decisive steps to dismantle the power of the old oligarchy and that leaving important parts of its power intact left him and the progressive project that cohered around him, vulnerable. But it cannot be denied that under Lula hugely significant gains were made for the majority of Brazilians. 

 

Lula’s commitment to the working class and to the most dispossessed was not solely theoretical. His politics were deeply rooted in his own life experiences. Lula was born into a very poor family in 1945. His parents were illiterate and Lula himself had no formal education. His first job, while still a child, was as a shoeshine vendor on the streets. As a young man, he rose through the ranks of the metalworkers’ union, becoming its president in 1975. After being jailed during the military dictatorship, Lula worked tirelessly to build the power of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), or the Workers’ Party, which was formed in 1980. In 2003 Lula would become the president of Brazil for two very successful terms, radically improving the lives of more than 40 million Brazilians who were lifted out of poverty. Lula created millions of jobs and unemployment fell below 6% and poverty by more than 27%. Under the “Zero Hunger” project more than 12 million families were guaranteed three meals a day. 

 

Lula did not only invest in improving basic living conditions. He also made major investments in education and enabled significant access to universities by poor and black Brazilians for the first time. 

 

As in South Africa, the racial logic of Brazilian society runs deep. The roots of the racialisation of Brazilian society lie in an extensive and brutal system of slavery abolished in 1888. This history has accumulated into the present in a way that fundamentally shapes the social, political and economic lives of Brazilians today. Lula’s presidency and charisma constituted a direct challenge to the elitist and racist logic of Brazilian society. This was the primary reason why the old white oligarchy wanted to destroy his reputation and to remove him from society. In these dark days, with outright fascists in power in Brazil and India, a right-wing buffoon like Boris Johnson in office in the United Kingdom, and the execrable Donald Trump in the White House, the release of Lula from prison is a real moment of hope. Immediately after his release, Lula went to celebrate, and strategise, at the headquarters of the metalworkers’ union. This was a powerful statement of intent. 

 

Breaking any link in the chain that the far right is tightening around the world is progress for all of us. Brazil may be far away geographically, but it shares many similarities with South Africa. These include a devastating colonial past that continues to shape much of the current structure of both economies and societies. There is much that we can learn from the Brazilian experience. 

 

There are real prospects that Lula’s charisma, extraordinary popular support and moral authority can re-energise and unite the left in Brazil and remove Bolsonaro from power. If this happens it will be a moment of global significance and one that we should seek to learn from in our own struggle to build the power of the working class and confront the onslaught of global capital and the right-wing. DM

 

Daily Maverick

 

*** 

 

Freed From Jail, Lula’s Ready to Fight in Latin America

 

By Vinícius Andrade and Jorgelina do Rosario

 

Bloomberg•November 9, 2019

 

(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to travel around Latin America, offering support for leftist leaders at a moment when the region is engulfed by growing political turmoil.

 

“I’m finally free and willing to fight,” Lula said in a video message that was broadcast at the Puebla Group’s meeting in Buenos Aires on Saturday. “I’m willing to walk across Brazil and travel around Latin America,” said the 74-year-old politician, who walked out of jail on Friday following a top court decision that reversed rules for imprisoning convicts.

 

In a three-minute message, Lula bashed Latin America’s elite and defended focusing on jobs and income distribution in order to improve life quality in the region. Argentina’s President-elect Alberto Fernandez “can do that and be an example to other countries,” he said.

 

The Puebla Group, which is a body created in July that brings together left-wing leaders from the region, is discussing priorities for Latin America during a meeting this weekend. Former presidents such as Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Uruguay’s Jose Mujica, Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo and Spain’s Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero are some of its higher-profile members.

 

On Saturday, Lula addressed a crowd of supporters gathered in front of a metalworkers union headquarters outside the city of Sao Paulo, criticizing the Carwash corruption probe and the market-friendly agenda that is being implemented by President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration.

 

“They need to explain why they’re presenting an economic project that will impoverish the Brazilian society even more,” Lula said. “I can’t see them destroying the country we built.”

 

***

 

Nov 10, 2019, 06:00pm

 

How Will Brazil’s Market React To Ex-President Lula’s “Freedom” 

 

Kenneth Rapoza Senior Contributor

 

It’s been a nail biter for months, but the answer came on Friday from a Workers’ Party (PT) picked, and packed, Supreme Court. They voted 6 to 5 to change a ruling about prison terms that freed ex-president and PT founder Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva after roughly two years in jail on corruption charges. 

 

The market for Brazil equities fell as much as 3.5% on the news, but recovered and closed at 3.39% instead. Brazil was the worst performing emerging market thanks to that Supreme Court ruling. 

 

The Brazilian real weakened to its lowest level since September 14, 2018, hitting R$4.17 to the dollar before settling a tad stronger at R$4.167.

 

The sell-off shows Brazil’s susceptibility to political risk now that Lula is out of jail and agitating against President Jair Bolsonaro, and his anti-corruption chief Sergio Moro.

 

Sergio Moro was the lead judge handling ex-political figures involved in the Petrobras bribery scandals known as the Car Wash investigations. Moro handed Lula his prison sentence, to which Lula appealed twice and lost. 

 

The Supreme Court’s ruling didn’t just lead to Lula’s release, but also to the release of his former chief of staff and Che Guevera companheiro Jose Dirceu. A host of mid-level traders and Petrobras executives soaked by the Car Wash will also walk. 

 

Today In: Money

 

Other politicians jailed on unrelated corruption charges are expected to be freed in the days ahead.

 

After market trading suggests Wall Street is not worried about Lula. The iShares MSCI Brazil (EWZ) exchange traded fund was trading higher on Friday after the closing bell. If emerging markets look good on Monday, Brazil will look good. If Brazil looks bad, blame Lula.

 

Lula wasn’t out of a prison for five hours before he began agitating to fight against the government.

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

Amid honking horns and shouts of the new PT fanbase slogan – “Lula livre!”, which means Free Lula in Portuguese – his exit was met by an equal number of protests on Saturday. 

 

People dressed in the Brazilian colors of yellow and green crowded Avenida Paulista to let the Bolsonaro government know how they felt about the Supreme Court decision. 

 

For his part, Bolsonaro warned his 5.3 million supporters (Lula has around 1.2 million) twice on Twitter recently not to engage with PT supporters in the streets or on social media. “You’ll just amplify their message, which is what they want,” he warned.

 

Lula’s release does not change the fact that he cannot run for office for at least 8 years. He still has some six more Car Wash-related cases against him, though it looks safe to say that he will not serve a day in prison should he lose any of them.

 

Wall Street may be right to view Lula as a has-been, with little ability to rabble rouse beyond his traditional union-base, a base that saw many vote Bolsonaro in 2018.

 

However, no one should doubt Lula’s connections within the left-wing activist movements of South America like Grupo de Puebla and their ability to agitate against the right-leaning governments. 

 

In fact, as soon as Lula got out of jail, new Argentina leaders Cristina Kirchner and Alberto Fernandez were letting their followers know of the good news. So did Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, who still believes Hugo Chavez, metamorphosed into a tiny bird, is whispering advice into his ear on how to carry out (still!) the fantastical Bolivar Revolution throughout Latin America. 

 

For his part, Lula said he was ready to continue with “the struggle”, a popular ode to left wing causes.

 

Should Lula be able to create chaos, two scenarios are likely for investors. 

 

1.      Buy Bolsonaro: Bolsonaro’s political base rallies around the president. They have been a bit weak on that front for the past year. The center-right could circle the wagons. Brazil remains a neutral to slight overweight providing reforms continue.

 

2.      Sell Lula: Lula gains some surprising traction and manages to get people out into the streets waving their red PT and Communist Party flags. Bank windows are smashed. Brazil’s stock market crashes by a good 10,000 points, and the Brazilian real goes to R$4.25 to the dollar in a heartbeat. 

 

Imagining A Worse Case Scenario

 

Social media activist group Vem Pra Rua (Come to the Street) managed to bring people out in protest ... [+]

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

Lula’s release is likely to increase political polarization in the short term, says Robert Wood, principal economist for Latin America at The Economist Intelligence Unit. “We don’t believe that it will materially impact the piecemeal advance of the government’s reformist economic agenda,” he says.

 

The worst case scenario looks like what we saw in Chilean headlines, with young people busting things and pundits bemoaning inequality as the only explanation for unrest against a conservative government led by billionaire president Sebastian Pinera. 

 

Chile is the richest and most equal of all Latin American countries. Protests have been going on for about a month.

 

Having told his supporters in a series of tweets that the new government was failing them, Lula gets out of prison only to throw a wrench into Brazil’s half broken machine. It is deeply irresponsible for him to come out and attack the country like this, but not entirely shocking in these times. There is no interest in healing, only prolonging the pain.

 

If Brazil is like the U.S., then Lula is, oddly enough, their version of Hillary Clinton, if one is to look at this through an American lens. Brazilian lawyers connected to Lula might even suddenly find whistleblowers, or start suing prosecutors to continue to sew doubts into the legitimacy of the Car Wash scandal. It would be unprecedented, but these are unprecedented times and so much of Brazil’s politics looks like the Trump-era here at home. 

 

Bolsonaro faced the Brazilian version of the Woman’s March before he was even elected president. His government faces a mostly unfriendly domestic and international political press: “Globo lixo” is the Brazilian version of “CNN sucks.” He and his supporters are called fascists, racists and homophobes. Lula is using buzzwords like “alt-right” in one Twitter rant after the next to win over the international press, already against Bolsonaro.

 

It will take a while before a worst case scenario unfolds. It unfolds only if Lula wants it to unfold and he succeeds at bringing Chilean style civil strife to Brazil. Such a move would come at a time when the country is still trying to dig itself out of the meteoric crater left by the PT.

 

Brazil’s version of the “Woman’s March” against Jair Bolsonaro in October 2018 prior to his election ... [+]

 

NurPhoto via Getty Images

 

Petrobras nearly went bankrupt on PT’s watch thanks in part to price controls and corruption. It is the most important state owned company in Brazil. 

 

Inequality declined under Lula’s two-terms in office because of foreign direct investment into Brazil – led by oil and sugarcane ethanol – and government spending. The new government is not cutting key social welfare programs like “Bolsa Familia”, which Lula expanded. 

 

Culturally speaking, Brazil is not known for days-long protests. Single day or weekend-long protests have sprouted up since 2015 during the impeachment of PT president Dilma Rousseff. They’ve also sprouted up over the last four years in support of Sergio Moro, or against pension reform, which has now passed. 

 

The last time Brazil was mired in weeks of disruptive protests was during the dictatorship years; years that some in the PT seem willing to relive – one last romantic, return-to-youth, fight before they leave this big bad world. 

 

For now, Wall Street can care less about Lula. 

 

Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro warned supporters to ignore left wing agitators on the streets and ... [+]

 

FIFA via Getty Images

 

The market seems fairly convinced the center-right will rally around Bolsonaro. 

 

There is also the possibility that the general public in Brazil has had enough of Lula and his antics. They have had enough of PT and its political offshoots like the Socialism and Liberty Party, or PSOL, a super-minority party with just enough A-list names and drama among them to keep them in the headlines.

 

I think Brazil can live with Lula livre. 

 

The takeaway: look for any attempt to bring chaos to Brazil to be met with virtuous support from the press over “rising inequality” – an inequality caused entirely by the economy PT blew up – but the chaos will be short-lived. 

 

If it is not short-lived, then it is because the opposition is looking for violent reactions from the government to prove a point. Bolsonaro will be tempted to take that bait. If he brings out the tanks, he feeds the PT beast their narrative of Bolsonaro as anti-Democratic militant. That could be too much for the reformists in his cabinet to bear. Would Wall Street favorite, Paulo Guedes, leave Bolsonaro’s cabinet under such circumstances, fearing the government is now bogged down in political warfare instead of economic policy debates? I think so. Then all bets on Brazil’s economy would be off, and its market, the best in Latin America, would crash hard. 

 

***

 

November 10, 2019 19:57

 

Lula Gets Ready for Clash With Bolsonaro

 

Brazil’s former leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Saturday attacked right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro for impoverishing working Brazilians and vowed to unite the left to win the 2022 elections in a speech one day after being freed from jail.

 

Lula’s wide-ranging, 45-minute speech to cheering supporters focused broadly on defeating Bolsonaro and improving the economic conditions of the working class, although he diverged frequently to talk about everything from his fiance to solidarity with leftist governments in Bolivia and Venezuela, DW reported.

 

Lula, who was president from 2003 to 2010, also took aim at a long list of political enemies, including Bolsonaro, Brazilin Economy Minister Paulo Guedes and Justice Minister Sergio Moro, a former judge who initially ruled to convict Lula.

 

“I want to tell them, I’m back,” the 74-year-old told hundreds of supporters dressed in red, the color of his Workers Party, outside of the metalworkers union where he got his political start.

 

He said Guedes seeks to remake Brazil economically in the image of Chile, long seen as a model of financially conservative governance, but that those policies are the reason for the widespread street protests paralyzing its Latin American neighbor.

 

A judge ordered that Lula be freed on Friday, a day after Brazil’s Supreme Court issued a broader ruling ending the mandatory imprisonment of convicted criminals after they lose their first appeal. Lula had been imprisoned on a corruption conviction carrying a nearly nine-year sentence.

 

Bolsonaro told reporters in Brasilia, “Let’s not give space to compromise with a convict.”

 

Earlier on Twitter, the president called for supporters to rally around his government’s agenda, which has included a severe tightening of public spending, saying that they must not allow Brazil’s next phase of recovery to be derailed.

 

“Do not give ammunition to the scoundrel, who is momentarily free but full of guilt,” Bolsonaro said.

 

While Bolsonaro did not mention Lula by name, his left-wing rival took direct aim at the president.

 

“If we work hard, in 2022 the so-called left that Bolsonaro is so afraid of will defeat the ultra-right,” he said.

 

***

 

The West’s left-right battle lines run through Brazil

 

 

By Ishaan Tharoor 

 

November 11, 2019 at 8:59 a.m. GMT+3

 

“They did not jail a man,” declared the released prisoner. “They tried to kill an idea, and ideas don’t disappear.”

 

The freed man was Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former left-wing Brazilian president who was jailed last year on corruption charges that his supporters believe were politically motivated. Lula left office in 2010 with a staggering 80 percent approval rating and was favored to be on course to return to power in 2018; his imprisonment paved the path to the presidency for far-right firebrand Jair Bolsonaro, who, both on the campaign trail and now in office, has loudly banged the drum against perceived perfidy and tyranny of leftist dogma.

 

But last week, Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that Lula, as well dozens of others ensnared in a rolling corruption probe that reshaped Brazilian politics, had been unjustly jailed without receiving due process — that is, they had been denied the ability to exhaust their right to appeal their sentences before imprisonment. On Friday, Lula walked out of jail and was greeted by a throng of supporters from his left-leaning Workers’ Party.

 

“You have no idea of the meaning of me being here with you,” he said soon after his release in the southern city of Curitiba. “I, who have been speaking to the Brazilian people through all my life, did not think that I would be able to speak today … Every day you were the democracy’s fuel I needed to exist.”

 

Thank you for your solidarity, you have always been my candidate for the US presidency and I hope democrats have the wisdom to nominate a candidate with your worldview. I hope American workers will make you US president. https://t.co/6qFf5DKQY5

 

— Lula (@LulaOficial) November 8, 2019

 

From thousands of miles to the north came a striking message of support. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted his admiration for Lula’s socially minded policies and decried his imprisonment. “I am delighted that he has been released from jail, something that never should have happened in the first place,” Sanders said. Lula thanked the U.S. candidate for his “solidarity,” and expressed his “hope” that the Democrats “have the wisdom to nominate a candidate with your worldview.”

 

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The stage is set for an emboldened and aggrieved Lula to take the fight to Bolsonaro, who has courted President Trump as part of a new hemispheric right-wing axis. “If we work hard, in 2022 the so-called left that Bolsonaro is so afraid of will defeat the ultraright,” Lula declared in a 45-minute speech he gave Saturday, vowing to build a new coalition to take down Bolsonaro.

 

Even before his release, he cast his struggle in more global terms. In a letter addressed to Britain’s Labour Party that he wrote from prison earlier this year, Lula inveighed against the “austerity” championed by Bolsonaro’s administration, what he deemed “the magic and wretched word that the rich everywhere use to attack the rights and achievements of the working class.” He went on: “‘We need to save resources, cut costs,’ they say, as they disassemble the state and become ever richer while the poor become ever poorer. So it is in the United Kingdom, so it is once again in Brazil.”

 

Bolsonaro has anchored his politics in a rejection of years of left-wing rule, unraveling environmental protections, seeking to privatize state institutions, and dabbling in an angry culture war targeting indigenous and LGBT rights. After Lula’s release, he heaped scorn on his leftist adversary. “Let’s not give space to compromise with a convict,” Bolsonaro told supporters in Brasilia. “Do not give ammunition to the scoundrel, who is momentarily free but full of guilt.”

 

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Indeed, there’s plenty Lula still has to overcome. “The legal path ahead of Lula, Brazil’s first working-class president, remains treacherous,” wrote my colleague Terrence McCoy and Heloisa Traiano. “He faces eight other trials on charges of corruption and money laundering. In 2016, as part of the Operation Car Wash investigation, Lula was accused of peddling government influence for renovations to his beachfront property.”

 

Lula was hardly the only official caught up in the dragnet of Operation Car Wash, which implicated others in his own party as well as numerous politicians in factions further to the right in various cases of alleged bribery, graft, and kickbacks for state contracts. His defenders question the specific charges against him and the evidence upon which they are based. Now‚ the country’s by zantine appellate process may mean the proceedings against Lula drag on in the background for many months to come as he works freely to mobilize the Brazilian opposition.

 

Recent revelations about the apparent secret collaboration between the prosecutors and the chief judge in charge of Operation Car Wash — who now also happens to be Bolsonaro’s justice minister — have further sharpened the impression that Lula was rushed into prison and then barred from running for office to prevent his return to power. The politicization of Lula’s travails has also been brought into stark relief by the myriad controversies spiraling around Bolsonaro, including a troubling new report linking his family to the assassination of a socialist politician in Rio de Janeiro.

 

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The imprisonment of Brazil’s former president Lula was unjust and wrong. 

 

I’m delighted Lula is now free, and will be able to resume his work as a committed socialist and Workers’ Party leader.

 

Brazil needs the kind of real change Lula has always been committed to.#LulaLivre

 

— Jeremy CorBy n (@jeremycorBy n) November 8, 2019

 

Some Brazilian commentators observed this weekend that the former president is emerging from his time in prison a more galvanized and possibly more radical figure, inflamed by a desire to roll back the far-right advance in his country. In his time in office between 2003 and 2010, Lula invested heavily in a slate of social programs that brought millions of people into the Brazilian middle class, a legacy that underscores his vast popularity to this day. Lula’s life story is that of a populist folk hero: He grew up in deep poverty, only learned to read at the age of 10, worked as a factory laborer and, as a union organizer, was hounded and briefly jailed by the country’s military dictatorship — the same junta routinely celebrated by Bolsonaro and his allies.

 

Latin America has a tangled, sprawling history of left-wing politics clashing against more reactionary forces. Just this weekend in Bolivia, mass protests and then an army and police insurrection compelled long-ruling President Evo Morales to give up a controversial bid to extend his rule. Lula, widely described when in power as a “moderate” leftist, presents an altogether different figure.

 

He “is the rare politician whose fate concerns a global audience,” wrote Andre Pagliarini, a historian of Latin American politics, pointing to Lula’s record of achieving both social uplift and economic prosperity. Pagliarini added: “It requires no stretch of the imagination … to imagine Lula as a bulwark against the reactionary right’s further advance in Brazil and Latin America more broadly.”

 ______________________________

Jai Sen

Independent researcher, editor

jai...@cacim.net

Now based in New Delhi, India (+91-98189 11325) and in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Anishinaabe territory (+1-613-282 2900) 

CURRENT / RECENT publications :

Jai Sen, ed, 2018a – The Movements of Movements, Part 2 : Rethinking Our Dance. Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press

Jai Sen, ed, 2018b – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ? (Indian edition). New Delhi : AuthorsUpfront, in collaboration with OpenWord and PM Press.  Hard copy available at MOM1AmazonIN, MOM1Flipkart, and MOM1AUpFront

Jai Sen, ed, 2017 – The Movements of Movements, Part 1 : What Makes Us Move ?.  New Delhi : OpenWord and Oakland, CA : PM Press.  Ebook and hard copy available at PM Press

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