Lula has to think about presidents who have embarked on a collision course with the legislature. The story is clear: minority governments that bet on confrontation ended in bad results. Django in 1964 and the dismissals of Collor and Dilma illustrate how the ability to govern collapses when the executive loses its ability to negotiate. In democracies, the balance of power changes through understanding. Whoever forgets this will pay a heavy price.
Lula has to think about presidents who have embarked on a collision course with the legislature. The story is clear: minority governments that bet on confrontation ended in bad results. Django in 1964 and the dismissals of Collor and Dilma illustrate how the ability to govern collapses when the executive loses its ability to negotiate. In democracies, the balance of power changes through understanding. Whoever forgets this will pay a heavy price.
We do not face institutional disruption or risk of accountability. But the political crisis is real and moving quickly. Daffy Alclumbri’s harsh remark, described by analysts as rude and unprecedented, in response to the suggestion that he was “selling the difficulties” in Jorge Messias’ candidacy for membership of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee, showed the level to which tensions had reached. It was more than just a message: it exposed the power struggle, while at the same time humiliating the Senate itself by turning the constitutional process into a theater of pathos.
Until recently, the central problem facing the government was its relationship with the House of Representatives, while Alcolombre acted as a buffer in the Senate. Not out of ideological affinity, but out of calculations. This began to change when Lula chose Messias for the Supreme Court, as opposed to the President of the Senate who defended Rodrigo Pacheco. At the same time, the Council approved an anti-factional law with the support of conservatives and right-wing parliamentarians – a political message that the majority is reorganizing.
The new alliance between Hugo Motta and Alcolombre strengthened the movement. Two episodes made this clear. First, the absence of both in the law in which the exemption from income tax was approved, which hollows out the event and determines the current political reality. Then in the session in which the veto on the project to make environmental licensing more flexible was dropped, when they appeared side by side in the Board of Directors, hand in hand. An unusual and politically eloquent gesture.
The consequences came immediately. Alcombre provided a special pension for community health workers, with significant financial impact. Congress overrode the PL veto. There is a risk of a historic defeat in the Messias hearing: if rejected, it will be the first rejection since Floriano Peixoto, 131 years ago.
Structural diagnosis helps, but it is not enough. Presidential coalitions lost their effectiveness in an environment characterized by excessive party fragmentation. We have evolved into a “quasi-parliamentarism without responsibilities”: Congress expands its power without bearing the burden of governance. In this arrangement, the executive branch needs to act with greater political consistency than it has shown.
There are also government errors. Planalto’s failures to articulate have accumulated, from delays in official communications about the nomination to the STF to the systematic use of social media to pressure Congress. Lula bet on rebuilding the ability to govern through tactical agreements and the distribution of positions. Instead of forming a broader democratic front, he formed a government centered around the Workers’ Party and ideologically similar parties, leaving Centrao only with secondary spaces. This produced a ministry that was largely unrepresentative of the real constituency required in Parliament, and left the executive without support to confront complex votes.
Moreover, expect no electoral conflict. As Dora Kramer wrote: “Parliament is the master of the game; it is up to the president to calibrate it to at least get even.” By entering campaign mode too early, he encouraged Congress to anticipate his own succession moves. The bloc of 276 deputies expressed by Hugo Motta is proof of this: it is large enough not to depend on Planalto or Bolsonarianism.
The government can still rebuild bridges, but it must recognize the new axis of power and abandon the alliance logic of the past. It will require sustained formulation, direct negotiations and clear political leadership. Without this, they will remain vulnerable to successive defeats.
Governance is hanging by a thread because the executive authority has lost the initiative in a system that no longer operates according to old mechanisms. Getting out of this situation requires something simple and difficult at the same time: restoring politics in the basic sense of the word. Without this, the relationship with Congress will continue to be characterized by mistrust and improvisation – and the country will be characterized by increasing uncertainty.
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Hubert Alkeres is the President of the Paulista Education Academy