New president to be sworn in, hoping to unite country bitterly divided by Jair Bolsonaro’s ‘four years of terror’
Tens of thousands of Brazilians have flooded the streets of the country’s capital, Brasília, to celebrate the start of a new political era with the swearing in of the president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The veteran leftwinger, a former factory worker who was president from 2003 to 2010, will take power on Sunday afternoon during celebrations attended by world leaders and followers from the four corners of South America’s largest nation.
“We feel dizzyingly unfathomable relief,” said the journalist Arimatea Lafayette, 59, as red-clad crowds marched towards the National Congress on Sunday morning to toast Lula’s return and the downfall of the far-right former president, Jair Bolsonaro, who flew to the US on Friday.
“We’ve been through four years of terror and now we feel free,” added Lafayette, who had flown in from the north-eastern state of Alagoas wearing a T-shirt stamped with Lula’s face.
Franceli Anjos, a 60-year-old feminist, had travelled 55 hours by road from the Amazon city of Santarém to witness history after four tumultuous years during which Amazon deforestation soared and a mishandled Covid outbreak killed nearly 700,000. “I’m convinced a new spring has arrived,” she said.
Lucas Rodrigues’s hands trembled with emotion as he described his delight at Lula’s sensational comeback, exactly 20 years after the former union leader became Brazil’s first working class president in January 2003.
“The whole of Brazil is here – that’s what Lula’s capable of,” the 25-year-old said after stepping off a bus from the southern state of Santa Catarina, where he is part of the landless workers’ movement.
Lula’s American biographer John D French believed that after declaring war on hunger – a hallmark of Lula’s first government – the new president’s top priority would be reuniting a bitterly divided nation after a poisonous election campaign marred by violence.
“I think what he’d like would be a generalised reconciliation … and a standing down of the levels of conflict,” French said, although he warned that would be difficult given the toxic chasm between Lulistas and Bolsonaristas.
“The notion that everything is going to be roses and peaches and cream [is misguided]. I think this is going to be a very conflictual period.”
Bolsonaro will boycott Lula’s inauguration, but the acting president, Hamilton Mourão, hinted at those divisions during a New Year’s Eve address in which he indirectly accused the rightwing radical of creating “an atmosphere of chaos and social breakdown” by refusing to recognise the election result.
“Of course it isn’t going to be easy – we are in crisis,” Liberatoscioli said. “But if he can fix half of the problems that have emerged during this mess of a government, it will be a big improvement.”