President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva suggested this Thursday, 28, that the PT could have beaten former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL) if a “candidate like him” had competed in the 2018 presidential elections instead of Fernando Haddad, the his current Finance Minister.
Haddad is criticized by the party for his conduct in economic policy, including in public demonstrations, and was already viewed with suspicion in the past, due to his performance when he ran for mayor of the capital Sao Paulo.
“I honestly don’t know if here in Brazil we had had a Lula to nominate in my place and not a Haddad to nominate, if we would have won,” Lula said in an interview with journalists alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, who was visiting the country.
Almost six years ago Haddad had 44.87% of valid votes against Bolsonaro’s 55.13% and was defeated in the second round. It was Lula himself who led the PT in choosing the current minister as candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in 2018. It was plan B in case Lula, at that time convicted and imprisoned in Operation Lava Jato, could not be the name of the presidential elections.
A party group objected to his name, but when PT president Gleisi Hoffmann announced on the day of the party’s national convention in August 2018 that he would join Lula as vice president and virtual replacement for Lula, Haddad was cheered and he spoke in a tone of gratitude.
The decision was confirmed a month later, on September 11 of the same year. Lula’s approval of Haddad’s name occurred only on the last day of the deadline granted by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) to the party to define the replacement of the then former president in the controversy.
At the time, the TSE, on the basis of the Clean Record Law, had excluded Lula’s candidacy due to his second degree conviction for passive corruption and money laundering – a sentence later annulled in 2021.
Haddad was the subject of internal criticism for losing the São Paulo mayoral election in the first round in 2016, but was appointed coordinator of the PT’s government program by Lula.
The current Finance Minister partially managed to obtain the transfer of the votes of the voter who wanted to opt for Lula in the elections and move on to the run-off, but Bolsonaro won.
In 2022, a rematch between Bolsonaro and the PT took place: this time Lula managed to contest the elections and won with 50.83% of valid votes compared to his rival’s 49.17%.
Haddad remains the target of PT criticism for his work at the Ministry of Finance
Gleisi, national president of the PT, and Haddad exchanged barbs in 2023 on the conduct of national economic policy. The divergence continues in 2024. In the last episode, in January, Gleisi told the newspaper The globethat criticizing the Finance Minister’s decisions is “a duty” and part of the party’s tradition.
The stance sparked criticism from one of the PT’s most important collaborators and main analysts, former minister José Dirceu. According to him, it is “almost cowardice” that there has not been full support for the economic proposals of Finance Minister Fernando Haddad.
“Another role of the party is to support the government, support the government. When the government presents a policy, our role is to support it,” he said. “In Haddad’s case, it’s almost cowardice not to give him full support to pass all the measures he wanted. Because all the measures he wanted make the zero deficit a lesser evil.”
Source: Terra
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