Among the names mentioned to fill a vacancy in the first level are Senator Eliziane Gama and Congresswoman Benedita da Silva
BRASILIA – President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva intends to invite a representative of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front, preferably a woman, to lead a ministry. Lula’s interlocutors say that the idea is to resolve two issues that torment Palazzo Planalto: bring the government closer to the evangelicals and, as a bonus, winks at the female audience.
These are areas of the electorate where the PT administration suffers from resistance and attrition. Talks between ministers and evangelicals are not recent, but they have intensified in recent months. In Planalto, the president’s aides take it for granted that he will carry out ministerial reform after the elections for the presidency of the House and Senate, scheduled for February 2025.
Lula wants to start the second half of his mandate with a team that symbolizes the new balance of power in the country, in the aftermath of the municipal elections. The strategy aims to conclude agreements for his possible candidacy for a new mandate, in 2026. Seen as a sort of “balancer”, the evangelical segment can change the course of a dispute, since it represents 30% of the population.
There are names in the list of names evaluated at Planalto to occupy a place in the first tier Senator Eliziane Gama (PSD-MA) and the MP Benedita da Silva (PT-RJ). The PT deputy was already Minister of Social Assistance and Promotion from 2003 to 2004, during Lula’s first mandate. Now, one of the ministries targeted by evangelicals is Social Development, which hosts the Bolsa Família program – a government showcase – and is currently in the hands of authorized senator Wellington Dias (PT).
Despite this prospect, the president of the Evangelical Parliamentary Front, Silas Câmara (Republicanos-AM), declared that he has no commitment to Planalto. “What exists today is a normal dialogue. But talking alone is useless. The government must change its attitude,” he said.
For the congresswoman, the resolutions on early childhood education and a technical note on legal abortion, even if overturned, indicate that there are areas of government working “disconnected” from Lula’s expressed desire to get closer to evangelicals.
The Chamber was even mentioned Donald Trump’s victory in the race for the White House as a warning sign for Planaltoarguing that conservatism is increasingly stronger in the world. “These elections in the United States have clearly demonstrated what drives politicians to not respect the feelings of the population,” he insisted, referring to the defeat of Kamala Harris, the current vice president. “The planet is proving that the left needs to recycle itself.”
The ministers who have had frequent meetings with evangelical leaders, at Lula’s request, are the head of the Attorney General’s Office (AGU), Jorge Messias, and the head of Institutional Relations, Alexandre Padilha.
“I’m a terrible peacemaker,” Messias said State, in counterpoint to Bolsonaro who, in 2019, when he was president, said he wanted a “terribly evangelical” profile to fill a vacancy at the Federal Supreme Court (STF).
Messiah grew up in a Baptist family and attended services since he was little. Now he has become the main “bridge” of contact between evangelicals and Planalto, dialoguing with representatives of different confessions, from MP Cezinha de Madureira (PSD-SP) to Bishop Rodovalho, of Sara Nossa Terra. “I have always tried to bring a message of peace to my colleagues and to demonstrate that our government has never opposed Christian values,” he observed.
The AGU minister said he was in a meeting with Lula last month, when he said he had a “liberation” because he did not suffer anything more serious when he fell in the Palácio da Alvorada and hit his headon the 19th. At that time, the president received five stitches and canceled a trip to Russia.
Four days before the fall, Lula received prayers in Planalto when he met members of the evangelical group in a ceremony to enshrine the law establishing National Gospel Music Day. “The president told us: ‘I’m happy that you prayed for me.’ He felt that the hand of God saved him from worse things,” Messias said. Padilha was also present at the meeting in which Lula referred to “liberation”, an expression widely used in religious contexts.
“Evangelical parliamentarians today suffer an internal attack from Bolsonarism, which has taken control of our agendas,” Otoni lamented. “There’s a guy who already gave his girlfriend an abortion, but he’s campaigning by saying he’s an ally of Bolsonaro and that he’s pro-life. This is the candidate who gets on our pulpit and steals our votes.”
Although the deputy did not name names, The influencer Pablo Marçal (PRTB) worries the segment because he defends the customs agenda without the intermediation of the churches. A defeated candidate for mayor of São Paulo, Marçal is negotiating his affiliation with União Brasil and wants to run for Planalto in 2026. The talks are still in the initial phase, but the governor of Goiás, Ronaldo Caiado, has already sent a message al The leadership of União Brasil says it will not give up its candidacy to succeed Lula if Marçal joins its party.
Otoni also said that Bolsonaro never supported the Evangelical Parliamentary Front in the four years of his government. “We don’t want to negotiate anything with Lula, but if there is a ministry, it will be important because parliamentarians have to make public policies and Bolsonarism took this agenda from the representatives of the church,” he underlined. “This does not mean a commitment to the re-election of the president in 2026, but rather to governability.”
The evangelical bench today brings together 151 deputies and 19 senators, most of whom are linked to Bolsonaro. In 2022, Otoni had even said that he would receive bullets from “vagrants like Lula” if they showed up at his door because this is the method used in Rio to deal with “criminals”. Days earlier, during an event at the CUT, the PT member had encouraged activists to look for deputies, in their homes, to pressure them to vote on proposals that interested workers. Otoni later stated that he regretted attacking Lula in that way.
Bolsonaro’s ally, MP Sóstenes Cavalcante (PL-RJ), predicted that the government’s attack on evangelicals will have no results. “Lula wants to manipulate faith, but nothing he does helps,” provoked Sóstenes, one of the vice-presidents of the Chamber.
In the assessment of the political scientist Vinícius do Valle, despite the criticisms of the members of the evangelical bench, there is a wing of the segment that feels abandoned by Bolsonaro and tries to get closer to Lula. “It is a wing that would like to be in government discreetly, without suffering the stigma of being left-wing. This is the best position in terms of electoral strategy, a bit like Centrão does,” he said.
Valle also noted that the evangelical benches of city councilors have declined in Rio and Sao Paulo, even after the alliance with Bolsonaro. “There is an internal conflict at the basis of Bolsonarism and the former president is unable to coordinate these different wings because he has other priorities”, commented the political scientist, director of the Evangelical Observatory.
Citing Bolsonaro’s efforts to revoke his ineligibility – as well as advocating amnesty for those convicted of the January 8 attacks -, Valle underlined that, in this scenario, the former president’s commitment is to the Centrão parties , and not exactly towards religious people. “This is why, in the dispute within the Bolsonarist base, the evangelicals have the worst,” he summed up.
Source: Terra
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