If we had to find a Brazilian equivalent to the famous “A minister, it shuts his mouth” by Jean-Pierre Chevènement, the admittedly more exotic version would look like this: “A minister cannot be bought racehorses during an official trip. » It’s hard to blame Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s Minister of Communications, Juscelino Filho: he’s a crackpot. Breeder of racehorses in the state of Maranhão, where he had the roads near his family’s farms paved at taxpayer expense, he took a military plane at the end of January to go from Brasilia to São Paulo. There, for four days, this relentless worker alternated between work meetings and… participation in the purchase of horses at auction.
Scandal, you say? In terms of Brazilian politics, it’s small beer. But the most interesting are the consequences of this affair. After a meeting with Lula, whom Filho described as “very positive”, the Minister remained at his post. For one reason, and one reason only: he is an eminent member of Union Brazil, a centrist party of the establishment without which the head of state cannot constitute a parliamentary majority. There was the Lula dream, the come-back incredible of the indestructible metal trade unionist against Jair Bolsonaro; now there is the much less glamorous Lula reality. Nearly three months after taking office, the Brazilian president is struggling.
It was expected. In October 202
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