POLITICS
Lula's first address after re-election trades healing for a mandate
Lula may be thinking his mandate is bigger than it really is. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert/PR
On Sunday night, in his first national broadcast since winning re-election, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gave investors a single sentence. "The trajectory of the public debt and high interest rates worry me," he said, adding that "all this effort will be made preserving the fiscal rules." No targets, measures, or finance minister followed, only new spending, such as zero taxes on the basic food basket and fare-free public transit on weekends.
Nobody expected more. The tone is what stands out.
After his 2022 win, Lula went out of his way to give the victory away. "This is not a victory of mine, nor of the Workers' Party, nor of the parties that supported me in this campaign," he said that night. "There are not two Brazils." He promised to rebuild relations with Congress and the courts "without attempts to overreach, intervene, control, or co-opt."
Four years later, he…
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