Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, 79, has been on a whirlwind campaign of interviews and public appearances in recent weeks to shore up dwindling support, but the numbers keep getting worse.

The latest survey from Datafolha puts his popularity rating at 24% — the lowest in the three terms the charismatic former metalworker has served as Brazilian President.

It’s the economy

Mr. Lula has promised that 2025 will be the “year of the harvest” of his electoral promises, after spending the first two years “fixing” destruction he said was left behind by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.

One of these promises was that under his rule, Brazilians would be back to “eating picanha,” a popular cut of beef that had gotten out of reach for many.

However, inflation has kept food prices stubbornly high — with one meme saying that instead of picanha, Lula had delivered “intermittent fasting.”

In January, food prices increased 7.25% year-on-year.

Mr. Lula’s recent suggestion that the population could control food prices by refusing to buy goods they felt were too costly was met with ridicule from the Opposition and only irritated Brazilians further.

“It’s a fundamental element” of the government’s poor image right now, political analyst Andre Cesar said.

Mr. Lula has been at loggerheads with the central bank, which has raised its key lending rate to 13.25% to combat inflation, with another one-point rise expected in March.

The real reached record lows against the dollar in December, although it has since recovered slightly, amid investor concerns over Brazil’s ability to curb public spending.

The leftist Lula — who beat Mr. Bolsonaro in 2022 by a razor-thin margin — is facing a surge in strength of the global right with the return to power of U.S. President Donald Trump.

At home, Mr. Bolsonaro retains political strength despite being barred from holding public office, and Congress has a right-wing majority.

“Today the conservative agenda is very strong in Congress,” which is currently mulling the criminalisation of drug possession and a possible amnesty for Bolsonaro supporters jailed for a riot against the seats of power in 2023, said Mr. Cesar.

Mr. Lula and his government have struggled to remain ahead of the Opposition when it comes to the digital sphere.

In January, an avalanche of disinformation about plans to track financial transactions on the beloved PIX instant money transfer system proved so tricky for the government to navigate that they backtracked entirely.

The measure, a bid to combat tax evasion, was twisted online as a plan to tax transactions and attack the poor.

Nikolas Ferreira, 28, a fiery social media star who is now a lawmaker for the right-wing Liberal Party, released a video slamming the measure that racked up more than 300 million views.

Mr. Lula’s “government is reactive… it has to face a right that is always two steps ahead,” said Mr. Cesar. “The right is digital, the left remains analog.”

In a bid to retake control of the narrative, Mr. Lula recently appointed a new communications chief and has been energetically engaging the media and traveling around the country.

It is still unclear whether Mr. Lula will seek reelection in 2026, but there is “a certain fatigue” with the President, according to an editorial in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

This has been aggravated by his health problems. The president underwent emergency surgery to stop a brain bleed in December, a few months after he suffered a fall.

“I am 79 years old… I cannot lie to anyone and much less to myself,” Mr. Lula told a local radio station. “If I am well, and I think I can be a candidate, I can run. But it is not my priority now.”

Brasilia:

Brazilian police on Tuesday arrested five people, including a member of former President Jair Bolsonaro’s cabinet, suspected of involvement in an alleged plan to kill then-President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in 2022, days before he took office.

Documents seized by police revealed a plan to shoot or poison Lula and his Vice President-elect Geraldo Alckmin and put two retired army generals, National Security Adviser Augusto Heleno and former Defense Minister Braga Netto, in charge of leading the country with the idea of holding new elections.

The conspiracy included the attempted murder of a Supreme Court justice with an explosive device or poison, police said in a statement.

The Army confirmed the arrests of retired Brigadier General Mario Fernandes, who had served as a deputy minister in Bolsonaro’s cabinet, and Lieutenant Colonels Helio Ferreira Lima, Rodrigo Bezerra de Azevedo and Rafael Martins de Oliveira.

The officers were in Rio de Janeiro but were not involved in the security operation for the summit of leaders of the G20 group of major economies that is ongoing in the city, the Army statement said.

Most of the men under investigation in the alleged 2022 coup plot are military personnel with Special Forces training, or close aides to Bolsonaro, a hard-right former army officer who won the presidency in 2018.

The arrests were the first time the federal police have described a plot to kill Lula and Alckmin, and stage a coup to prevent him returning to power.

Police identified the main plotter as Fernandes, who was found in possession of a plot outline that had been printed at the presidential palace.

“A detailed operational plan called ‘Green and Yellow Dagger’ was identified, which would be executed on December 15, 2022, aimed at the murder of the elected candidates for president and vice president,” the police said in a statement.

Federal police served five arrest warrants on Tuesday, without naming the men arrested, as well as three search and seizure warrants and other 15 precautionary measures.

These included banning suspects from contacting the others and forbidding them from leaving the country.

“Investigations indicate that the criminal organization used a high level of technical-military knowledge to plan, coordinate and execute illicit actions in the months of November and December 2022,” the police statement said.

FEDERAL POLICE PROBE

Lula defeated Bolsonaro in a presidential election in October 2022 and the leftist leader took office on Jan. 1, 2023. Bolsonaro had filled his government with military officers, many of them opposed to Lula.

Bolsonaro left Brazil days before Lula’s inauguration for Florida and never recognized his electoral defeat. He eventually returned to Brazil and is under investigation for his alleged role in encouraging the riots in Brasilia on Jan. 8, 2023, when his supporters stormed and vandalized government buildings in the capital, hoping to cause chaos and spur the military to take power.

A federal police investigation will conclude that Bolsonaro conspired to engineer the attempted coup after he lost the election, a source with direct knowledge of the investigation told Reuters. The probe is expected to be finished this month.

Bolsonaro has made no public comment on the coup plot allegations. Reuters was trying to reach representatives of the former president and Fernandes for comment.

The Brazilian army monitored the federal operation against the coup plotters, which was carried out on Tuesday in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, Goias and Amazonas states.

According to the sources Reuters spoke to, the plotters also planned to kill Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who led investigations into Bolsonaro for abuse of power and unproven attacks on Brazil’s voting system when he was president, and banned him from running for elected office until 2030.

More than 2,000 people were arrested for participating in the January 2023 uprising in Brasilia, although most were later released. Others have been convicted by the Supreme Court on charges of involvement in an attempted coup.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)