Editorial: Lula's lynching

Yesterday, 14, Lula attended the 10th Court of Justice, in Brasília, where he testified in a suit that is responsible for an alleged attempt to obstruct the investigations of Operation Lava Jato, a denunciation generated by the awarding of the former senator Delcídio do Amaral, who accuses him of trying to buy the silence of Nestor Cerveró, former president of state-owned Petrobras. Lula, in his testimony, after denying the accusations against him, told the judge of his apprehensions about a possible prison, massacred that is systematically by sectors of the media, accusing him of this and that, in a kind of "crowd" by a Imminent arrest of the former President of the Republic. In this crowd are not only sectors of the media, but even a Federal Police delegate who anticipated a probable arrest of the PT leader for the coming months. Without speaking, of course, in that legion of "coxinhas" spread all over Brazil.

Until recently, I have read an article where the author emphasizes the distinction of treatment given by justice to former presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Fernando Henrique Cardoso. His reference is that judge of Paraná, who, according to the author, took pains in the verdict conceded by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in the Federal Court of Paraná, in the same proportion that treats Lula with the contempt of a condemned future. We are not going to enter into the merits of political affinities here, not least because this is not the emphasis of the commentary of the author of the article. Its emphasis is on the class question. FHC was, as a cradle, a man from the Casa Grande. Lula only a former trade unionist, of poor origin, who negotiated with the elite the possibility of becoming President of the Republic. It is more or less the same distinction between the rich of origin and the emerging ones, who can raise money, but can not conceal their origins - or symbolic capital - in the smallest detail. They may even have ultra-modern sound equipment, as Collor de Mello recalled in one of the presidential campaigns, but their musical preferences fall on a Tayroni or Waldick Soriano.

Lula usually uses these analogies very much, which constitute one of the strengths of his communication with the masses. According to the press, even nervous, he abused these analogies during his hearing at that court, as at the time when the judge would have asked about his profession and he emphasized his condition of "mechanical turning." In another moment, he said that his greatest asset is the defense of his honor, because he wants to walk upside down, a natural task for the elite, but a huge effort for those who come from below and did not accept the cangalha. My prediction is that Lula, at some point, will be condemned. This seems to be part of the coup plot script. The gear grinds in that direction. A lesser consequence, if the elite consider it more prudent, may be their ineligibility.

He is already moving as a candidate. According to a journalist here in Pernambuco, in a recent meeting with communist Luciana Santos (PCdoB), he would have confirmed his intention to run for the 2018 elections. Some people say that it is only a strategy to help them, In your defense. His potential candidate status would weigh on his judgment. He would cease to be just a former president who hung his boot. This, in fact, has a weight. In a recent statement, "governability" was re-invoked at the time of the trial of the Dilma / Temer campaign accounts at the TSE. Political circumstances are already naturally complicated and, political circumstances of a coup, then ... If, in fact, confirm your candidacy, the former president will have great obstacles to remove by the front. In addition to getting rid of a legal set-up of five lawsuits brought against him, he will have to overcome among the electorate the "stigma" cleverly constructed against him by the conservative media, who mounted a sort of intensive reputation lynching program against the former president . I do not need to discuss the consequences of these warps here.

Added to this is the contingency of being - here and there - the ascendancy of right-wing conservative political actors and parties. If in other times his concern would be with the toucans, today who appears in his rearview are candidates like Jair Bolsonaro. When this citizen comes here to Recife he is effusively cheered at Guararapes Airport and through which he circulates, accompanied by a troupe of fancied followers, mostly young people. When he was still in the middle of the polls, it was already known that the scenario could change in his favor, as indeed has been happening. We are in a global political environment that favors it, as we say. Someone recalled that economic problems, bringing structural unemployment, a severe recession, erosion of rights, could cause voters to feel homesick for "those times." It should be remembered, however, that the current government, with the support of a powerful media, blames the PT for these problems.

The PT, on the other hand, is a party that is very fragile, for whom there is a pressing need to reinvent itself. An exit from the left is not so simple, since the bridges were never well built. Not even when the PT was a government. A good deal of these difficulties can be translated into a recent statement by Federal Deputy Chico Alencar (PSOL), in an interview with a radio station here in Recife, where he said that the party will have its own candidacy in the forthcoming presidential elections. And a political rearticulation by conservative supporters - in an ill-fated reprint of the famous class conciliation - would not recommend even the most enlightened party ideological voter, for even he knows where this led: after a pseudo honeymoon, a resumption of Power by these conservative forces, who do not intend to hand it back-dividing it would be a more appropriate term-with the PTs at all. It is in this extremely unfavorable scenario that Lula intends to launch himself on the political scene once again, disputing the presidential elections of 2018.