LULA IS BACK AS THE PENDULUM SWINGS

Saro Thiruppathy reflects on the importance of President Lula’s victory for Brazilians and the world in terms of saving the Amazon rainforest

President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known mononymously as ‘Lula,’ is back in the presidential palace – for a third time. He defeated incumbent extreme right-winger Jair Bolsonaro at the polls held in October and was sworn in on 1 January.

GOVERNANCE Soon after his swearing-in ceremony was over, Lula reached out to the Brazilian people and promised to “rebuild the nation and make a Brazil of all, for all.”

Speaking to Congress, he stressed on unity and reconstruction. These two concepts are critical to a country that’s deeply divided economically and highly polarised politically.

In April 2021, in a twist of fate, Brazil’s Supreme Court annulled the corruption charges against Lula. And after spending 580 days in jail, he walked out a free man and set out to win the 2022 election.

Lula won the hotly contested polls with 50.9 percent of the votes. A close call… but a victory nonetheless. However, he has his work cut out because even though Bolsonaro lost, his party won a majority in Congress.

Having rejected the election result, Bolsonaro went to the US so that he could avoid attending the handover ceremony.

Since Bolsonaro did not wait to undertake his final duty of passing on the presidential sash to Lula, a rubbish picker named Eni Souza was selected to do the honours in keeping with the principles of the president’s Workers’ Party.

And to stress his commitment to be inclusive in governance, standing with him was an indigenous leader, a black Brazilian and a disabled influencer. This is particularly important in a country where racism and bigotry have played an extremely divisive role.

REFORESTATION In his victory day speech, Lula promised to undo the damage caused by the previous government, which he says has depleted funding for education, healthcare and conservation of the Amazon rainforest.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in 694,000 deaths because Bolsonaro did not react fast enough to the threat of the virus and kept calling it a “little flu.” Lula has accused Bolsonaro of causing genocide in Brazil due to his inefficient COVID-19 policies and promised that the reasons will be thoroughly investigated.

He also reappointed one of Brazil’s most respected climate activists – Marina Silva – to head the environment and climate ministry. Her task is to achieve Lula’s promise of ‘zero deforestation’ in the Amazon by 2030.

DEFORESTATION To fully appreciate Lula’s victory and Bolsonaro’s defeat, it is necessary to take a step back into the latter’s period of governance.

The deliberate damage to the Amazon rainforest by Bolsonaro’s government is mind-blowing. He took office in January 2019 and promptly set about destroying the Earth for financial gains by overturning environmental regulations that were in place to preserve this magnificent rainforest.

He enabled unbridled deforestation and the clearing of land so that it could be used for cattle ranching. This degradation of the forest has catastrophic consequences at local and global levels. It is impacting global warming and climate change, biodiversity and the homeland of the indigenous people in the region.

A study published in Nature in 2020 says that if the destruction of the Amazon continues, much of the land will turn into an arid savannah or even ‘dry scrubland.’ Scientists warn that this will happen within decades due to the deliberate and illegal fires that were being set to clear the land for pasture at that time.

More than 34,000 square kilometres of rainforest have been lost to deforestation between August 2019 and July 2021. And Bolsonaro’s government has tacitly allowed illegal logging and deforestation of indigenous lands, and ignored what Amnesty International calls the “violence against those living on and seeking to defend their territories.”

Human Rights Watch says that he deliberately weakened environmental law enforcement agencies and undermined their ability to effectively sanction environmental crime or detect exports of illegal timber.

Furthermore, under presidential decree, fines for illegal logging in the Brazilian Amazon were discontinued, and Bolsonaro slashed the budgets of agencies that protected jungle lands from illegal clearing.

The extent of damage to the rainforest under his watch is humungous. Its loss is impacting not only Brazil but the entire world in terms of the Amazon’s depleting capacity as a carbon sink, and the disappearance of fauna and flora that are endemic to the area.

Bolsonaro’s government has failed as custodians of the Amazon and Pantanal. The Pantanal, which is the world’s largest tropical wetland that’s located mostly within Brazil, contains some of the most diverse ecosystems in the world.

The future of the Earth is very closely linked to the Amazon rainforest, and President Lula’s understanding of its incredible importance to mankind is in itself one of the greatest victories not only for Brazil but also for the world as a whole.