US President Donald Trump.

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.”

A packed bus collided with a truck and burst into flames early on Saturday in Brazil, killing more than 30 people, the fire department said.

After removing all of the victims from a major highway near the town of Teofilo Otoni in Minas Gerais, the state’s fire department reported that of the 45 people on the bus, 38, including the bus driver, had been confirmed dead.

The other passengers remained in critical condition after being transported to a local hospital.

The truck driver fled the scene, and three occupants of a car that collided with the truck and became trapped underneath survived the accident, said the fire department.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva stated on social media that the government was ready to provide whatever assistance was needed, and that the Federal Highway Policy was at the site.

“I deeply mourn and extend my prayers to the families of the more than 30 victims of the accident in Teofilo Otoni, Minas Gerais. I pray for the recovery of the survivors of this terrible tragedy,” he wrote on X.

A forensic investigation will be required to determine the accident’s cause, as differing accounts were gathered from witness testimonies, said the local fire department.

Initially, firefighters reported the bus had a tire blowout, causing the driver to lose control before colliding at around 4 a.m. local time, with an oncoming truck on the BR-116 federal highway, a major route connecting Brazil’s densely populated southeast to the poorer northeast.

However, witnesses also reported that a granite block the truck was transporting came loose, fell on the road and caused the collision with the bus, said the fire department.

“Only the forensic investigation will confirm the true version,” said the fire department in a statement.

The bus departed from Sao Paulo and was headed to the state of Bahia.

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

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, waves while leaves the Sirio-Libanes Hospital after a surgery in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Sunday (December 15, 2024).
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Doctors discharged Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from the hospital on Sunday (December 15, 2024), his medical team told reporters, after a pair of emergency surgeries last week to treat and prevent bleeding in his head.

The 79-year-old leftist leader also spoke publicly for the first at a hospital press conference and the doctors said he will now continue his recovery from his home in Sao Paulo.

In brief remarks, an upbeat Mr. Lula said he was eager to get back to work as soon as possible, and his medical team gave him a green light to do so, though they advised him to avoid long-haul international flights and exercise.

“I’m here, whole,” said Mr. Lula at Sao Paulo’s Sirio-Libanes Hospital where he had been receiving care. “I’m healed, I just need to take care of myself.”

The team added that the President will on Thursday (December 19, 2024) undergo a CT scan, a medical procedure used to obtain detailed internal images of the body, before returning to the capital Brasilia.

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.)

Venezuela reacted furiously to Brazil’s veto at a summit in the Russian city of Kazan earlier this week, calling the decision “hostile” and “immoral” act. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro vowed on Saturday (October 26, 2024) that his country would not be silenced after Brazil vetoed its bid to join the BRICS group of emerging economies.

The South American country is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis, which the Government says is a result of US sanctions, and has long sought to join the BRICS group.

Editorial : ​One-man rule: On Venezuela’s disputed presidential election

Venezuela reacted furiously to Brazil’s veto at a summit in the Russian city of Kazan earlier this week, calling the decision “hostile” and “immoral” act.

Returning home from Kazan, Mr. Maduro said on state television that “no one will block or silence Venezuela, not today, not tomorrow, not ever”, without mentioning Brazil.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is a long-time ally of Mr. Maduro. But relations between them have been strained since Mr. Maduro’s disputed re-election following the July 28 ballot, which the Opposition claims to have won.

An advisor to Mr. Lula, former Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, attributed the veto to a “breach of confidence” by Venezuela.

He said Mr. Maduro had promised Mr. Lula he would publish detailed results from the July 28 election but had yet to do so.

The Venezuelan Opposition has said those results would show that Mr. Maduro was handily defeated by Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who fled to Spain in September after a warrant was issued for his arrest on what the Opposition calls trumped-up charges.

Mr. Maduro said he had met officials from “nearly 30 governments” in Kazan and that “all” had hailed his “great electoral victory”.

The BRICS, which already included Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and China as members, were joined in 2024 by Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

This combo picture shows Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega Brazil and Nicaragua plunged into a diplomatic crisis after the Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva govt. expelled the Nicaraguan ambassador in response to the expelling of its diplomatic representative by Daniel Ortega’s government.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Brazil’s government on Thursday kicked out Nicaragua’s ambassador to the nation in retaliation for a similar move by the Central American country’s President Daniel Ortega.

The press office of Brazil’s foreign ministry confirmed to The Associated Press that it had decided to expel Nicaraguan ambassador Fulvia Patricia Castro Matu. It said Brazil’s ambassador to Nicaragua, Breno da Costa, was expelled Monday.

The office said da Costa was kicked out for failing to attend the 45th anniversary celebrations of Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution. Ortega, whose critics see him as an authoritarian leader, was a guerrilla fighter in that movement.

An ongoing rift between Ortega and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, two former allies, has grown over the last year.

Two diplomatic sources in Brasilia told the AP that Nicaragua’s government protested two weeks ago over da Costa’s absence from the festivities, opening the way to kick him out. The sources, who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the matter publicly, added that the Brazilian ambassador was following orders from the foreign ministry.

The foreign ministry hadn’t previously confirmed local media reports of the Brazilian ambassador’s expulsion.

Lula, who previously supported Ortega’s presidency, steered away from Ortega after the Nicaraguan leader ignored a request from Pope Francis to stop repression against Catholic clergymen in the Central American nation.

Amnesty International in April said that Ortega’s government arbitrarily arrested at least 119 people, including Roman Catholic bishop Rolando Álvarez for alleged conspiracy and dissemination of false information.

Brazil has frozen relations with the Central American country. That means no visits or meetings between leaders and diplomats of the two countries.

Leticia Bessa, an administrative assistant at the Nicaraguan embassy in Brazil’s capital, said Matu left the country before Brazil’s foreign ministry finalized its decision.

Later, Brazil’s foreign ministry added that da Costa is expected to leave Nicaragua at the end of the day. It also clarified that the exit of its ambassador does not represent a total break of diplomatic relations with Managua.

Nicaragua’s Vice President Rosario Murillo, who is also first lady and the government’s main spokesperson, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the diplomatic spat.

During a news conference with international news agencies in Brasilia on July 22, Lula told reporters that Ortega was not answering his phone calls.

Benjamin Gedan, director of the Wilson Center’s Latin America program, said the incident makes Ortega even more of a “pariah with few friends in the region.”

“Lula is a leftist icon, but he does not blindly support all fellow travelers,” Gedan said. “Two years ago, following Ortega’s latest sham reelection, practically no leaders from the region showed up in Managua for his inauguration. The collapse of democracy in Nicaragua and Venezuela has offered the Latin American left an opportunity to prioritize democracy over ideology.”

Rio De Janiero:

Wedding photos or a diplomatic visit? The apparent “bromance” between French President Emmanuel Macron and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has set social media fans alight.

During his three-day visit to Brazil, 46-year-old Macron was pictured smiling and warmly embracing Lula, 78, during a trip to the Amazonian rainforest.

Many of the images have since circulated wildly among social media users in Brazil alongside montages and witty comments.

i see a new macron/lula family christmas card dropping pic.twitter.com/zzJjFPtUxC

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) March 27, 2024

One picture showing the leaders raising their arms underneath a large tree has been edited to show them holding red balloons in the shape of a heart.

Another portrays the pair hand in hand, smiling as they look at the horizon while floating in a boat along the Amazon River.

Agora sim, deixei a foto do Lula com o Macrón do jeito que ela deveria ser pic.twitter.com/VYOsjM1Y2e

— Lívia Lamblet (@livialamblet) March 27, 2024

“They are going to marry in the Amazon and have their honeymoon in Paris,” joked one user on X, while others said pictures from the trip could make up a wedding album.

Macron’s warm relations with Lula mark a departure from the frosty ties between the French leader and Brazil’s former right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who led the country from 2019 to 2022.

His trip, which will end Thursday in Brasilia when he meets Lula at the presidential palace, saw the two leaders announce a billion-dollar green investment plan for the Amazon.

France, the seventh-largest economy in the world, and Brazil, the ninth-largest, are considered key players in a geopolitical scene marked by rivalry between China and the United States.

Paris sees Brasilia as a bridge to large emerging economies whose voices Brazil is trying to amplify through its presidency of the G20, and membership of the BRICS+ group.

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

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s veto will take effect after publication in the official gazette, and will be analyzed by Congress, which could still reverse it, setting up another Supreme Court challenge. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Brazil’s President announced on Friday that he will partially veto a bill restricting Indigenous groups’ claims to ancestral lands, overriding Congress’s recent approval of the legislation.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will veto a core stipulation of the bill which would have only recognised Indigenous peoples’ right to claim territories they occupied or were legally disputing in October 1988, when the constitution was ratified, Minister of Institutional Relations Alexandre Padilha announced.

The land rights legislation, backed by the powerful agribusiness sector, is seen by some critics as an effort to counteract Mr. Lula’s efforts to bolster environmental and Indigenous land protections, after his campaign pledge to demarcate new tribal territories.

Mr. Padilha said that the president’s veto would be partial and not total as Indigenous movements had requested, with the rest of the bill signed into law.

“Everything that attacked the rights of Indigenous peoples, and which contradicted the constitution, and the recent decisions of the court, were vetoed,” Mr. Padilha said.

The bill drew backlash with its 1988 “time-frame argument”, or Marco Temporal thesis, which was pushed by the country’s powerful farm lobby. Indigenous groups filed a lawsuit arguing that many people had been forced from their ancestral lands, including during the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from the 1960s to 1980s.

The Supreme Court sided with the Indigenous activists and climate campaigners last month.

But days later, Congress approved the legislation, in conflict with the court’s ruling.

The president’s veto will take effect after publication in the official gazette, and will be analyzed by Congress, which could still reverse it, setting up another Supreme Court challenge.

Sonia Guajajara, Brazil’s first Indigenous Affairs Minister, who was appointed by Mr. Lula, called the President’s move “a great victory”.

“Vetoing the time frame reaffirms the Supreme Court’s decision, guaranteeing the government’s coherence with the Indigenous, environmental and international agenda,” she said.

Many environmentalists consider the establishment of state-protected Indigenous reserves one of the best ways to fight deforestation and, with it, climate change.

According to data from Funai, a government entity that defends Indigenous populations, the reserves occupy 13.75 percent of the country’s territory.

Indigenous people make up 1.7 million of Brazil’s 203 million inhabitants.

New Delhi:

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that he was very touched emotionally when he went to pay homage to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat in Delhi. He noted that Mahatma Gandhi had a great meaning in his political life.

In his remarks at the closing session of the G20 Presidency, the Brazilian President said, “And I would like to say, Prime Minister Modi that I personally am very much touched emotionally when I went to pay a homage to our dear Gandhi. Everybody knows that in my political life, Mahatma Gandhi has great meaning because the struggle for non-violence with role model that I followed for many decades when I was in the labour movement. And that’s why I am very much touched and emotional. And I like to thank you for the opportunity to pay this homage that we did today.

“And I like to say to all of you that Brazil will take the chair of the G20 and we will make a tremendous endeavour to manage to at least try to do something as the same that our brothers and sisters from India did,” he added. 

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made the statement as he and all other world leaders paid homage to Mahatma Gandhi at Rajghat on Sunday morning. 

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday thanked India and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s efforts in conducting the G20 Summit and set forth three priorities under his country’s presidency of the grouping. These, the Brazil President said include social inclusion and the fight against hunger, energy transition, sustainable development and reform of global governance institutions.

At the closing session of the G20 Summit in New Delhi, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, “All these priorities are part of the Brazilian presidency motto which says ‘Building a fair world and a sustainable planet’. Two task forces will be created – Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty and the Global Mobilisation against Climate Change.”

“…The technical groups and the preparatory ministerial meetings will be hosted in several cities in all five regions of our country…I will be very much honoured to welcome you all to Rio de Janeiro Summit in November of 2024 and before I ham the hammer here, I would like to thank very much to PM Modi and to thank the Indian people for the competence that they had in organising this event…,” he said. 

He made the remarks after PM Modi handed over the ceremonial gavel of the Group of 20 Presidency to him. The Brazilian President said that the world needs to redouble its efforts to achieve the goal of ending world hunger by 2030.

“We need to redouble our efforts to achieve the goal of ending world hunger by 2030. Otherwise, we will be facing the biggest multilateral failure in recent years, Acting to fight climate change requires political will and determination of the rulers as well as resources and technology transfer. We want greater participation of the emerging economies in the decision-making process of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the unbearable foreign debts of the poor countries needs to be addressed,” he added.

The Brazilian President said that people today are living in a world where wealth is more concentrated in which millions of human beings still go hungry and where sustainable development is always threatened.

“…We are living in a world where wealth is more concentrated in which millions of human beings still go hungry, where sustainable development is always threatened, in which government institutions still reflect the reality of middle of the last century. We will only be able to face all these problems if we address the issue of inequality – inequality of income, of access to healthcare, education, food, gender and race and also of representation is at the origin of these anomalies,” Lula da Silva said.

He congratulated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an “efficient leading” of India’s G20 Presidency and praised him for the work carried out in preparing the G20 Summit. Lula also expressed gratitude to India for its efforts of giving voice of the topics of interest to emerging economies.

“I thank India for its efforts for giving voice of the topics of interest to emerging economies. I would also like to give my salute to our friend, the representative of the African Union, who is a member of the G20,” the Brazilian President said.

Earlier, PM Modi handed over the ceremonial gavel of the G20 Presidency to Brazil’s President at the G20 summit here.

“I congratulate Brazilian President and my friend Lula da Silva and hand over the gavel of Presidency,” PM Modi said minutes before the G20 Summit in Delhi concluded.

Earlier, Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva handed over saplings to Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of Session 3 of the G20 Summit.

While Indonesia held the G20 presidency last year, Brazil will hold the presidency after India and hold the G20 Summit in its capital Rio de Janeiro. India took over the G20 presidency on December 1 last year at the G20 Summit in Indonesia’s Bali and will continue to hold it till the end of November.

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