\tBras\u00edlia, Nov 7 (AFP\/APP):Fresh off a celebratory beach holiday, Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva got down to uglier business Monday: figuring out how to govern with a hostile Congress, nasty budget crunch and impossible-looking to-do list.<\/p>\n
The political horse-trading of the transition period now starts in earnest for the veteran leftist, who will be inaugurated for a third term on January 1, facing a far tougher outlook than the commodities-fueled boom he presided over in the 2000s.<\/p>\n
Lula, 77, celebrated his narrow win over far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the October 30 runoff election by escaping last week to the sun-drenched coast of Bahia (northeast).<\/p>\n
He joked he needed a belated honeymoon with his first-lady-to-be, Rosangela “Janja” da Silva, whom the twice-widowed ex-metalworker married in May.<\/p>\n
His other honeymoon — the political one — could be short, analysts say.<\/p>\n
Lula is meeting Monday with advisors in Sao Paulo. Tuesday, he will travel to the capital, Brasilia, to start negotiating with members of Congress, allies told AFP.<\/p>\n
He faces a battle to get bills passed in a legislature where conservatives scored big gains in October’s elections.<\/p>\n
Lula’s coalition has around 123 votes in the 513-seat Chamber of Deputies, and 27 in the 81-seat Senate, meaning he will have to strike alliances to get anything done — and even just survive, given the threat of impeachment in Brazil, where two presidents have been impeached in the past 30 years.<\/p>\n
– Into the shark tank –
\nLula is expected to meet in Brasilia with lower-house speaker Arthur Lira, a key Bolsonaro ally from the loose coalition of parties known as the “Centrao,” a group known for striking alliances with whoever is in power — in exchange for feeding on the federal pork barrel.<\/p>\n
Analysts say Lula will be under pressure from the Centrao not to oppose the so-called “secret budget”: 19.4 billion reais ($3.8 billion) in basically unmonitored federal funding that Bolsonaro agreed to allocate to select lawmakers to boost support for his reelection bid.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, money will be tight for Lula’s campaign promises, including increasing the minimum wage and maintaining a beefed-up 600-reais-per-month welfare program, “Auxilio Brasil.”<\/p>\n
Bolsonaro, who introduced the program, did not allocate sufficient funding to continue it in the 2023 budget.<\/p>\n
“We can’t start 2023 without the ‘Auxilio’ and a real increase in the minimum wage,” the leader of Lula’s Workers’ Party, Gleisi Hoffmann, said Friday.<\/p>\n
“That’s our contract with the Brazilian people.”<\/p>\n
Facing the impossible math of funding such pledges without breaking the government spending cap, Lula’s allies are exploring their options, including passing a constitutional amendment allowing exceptional spending next year.<\/p>\n
But they are racing the clock: it would have to be approved by December 15.<\/p>\n
– Markets watching –
\nLula, who ran on vague promises of restoring Latin America’s biggest economy to the golden times of his first presidency (2003-2010), inherits a struggling economy time around.<\/p>\n
“The challenge is… how to balance fiscal responsibility with a highly anticipated social agenda,” said political scientist Leandro Consentino of Insper university.<\/p>\n
Markets are watching closely — especially his pick for finance minister.<\/p>\n
Lula is expected to split Bolsonaro’s economy “super-ministry” into three portfolios: finance, planning, and trade and industry.<\/p>\n
“We can expect not-totally-orthodox economic policy, but which maintains a certain level of fiscal discipline,” said Adriano Laureno, of consulting firm Prospectiva.<\/p>\n
Laureno predicted a political choice for finance minister, a technocrat for planning and a business executive for trade.<\/p>\n
Names floated for the finance job include Lula’s former education minister Fernando Haddad and his campaign coordinator, Aloizio Mercadante. <\/p>\n
– COP27 stage –
\nOther closely watched portfolios are the environment and a promised new Indigenous affairs ministry — both sore spots under Bolsonaro, who presided over a surge of destruction in the Amazon rainforest.<\/p>\n
The former job could go to Lula’s one-time environment minister Marina Silva, credited with curbing deforestation in the 2000s.<\/p>\n
In a key gesture, the president-elect will make his return to the international stage at the COP27 UN climate summit in Egypt, where he will arrive next week, advisors said.<\/p>\n
Silva, who will travel with him, told newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo: “The climate issue is now a strategic priority at the highest level.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bras\u00edlia, Nov 7 (AFP\/APP):Fresh off a celebratory beach holiday, Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva got down to uglier business Monday: figuring out how to govern with a hostile Congress, nasty budget crunch and impossible-looking to-do list. The political horse-trading of the transition period […]<\/p>\n
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