The new leftist government of Brazil created on Friday a Council for LGBTQIA+ rights. Lula is the most left-winged president in the country’s history.
Brazil’s new president Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, also known as simply Lula, instituted on Friday a new Council for LGBTQIA+ rights. Lula is the most left-leaning president in Brazil’s history, coming after four years of conservative rule by Jair Bolsonaro.
According to the Italian press agency ANSA, the new Council will be formed by 19 representatives of the civil society as well as 19 government representatives. Membership in the Council will not be remunerated.
The Council will be a subsection of Brazil’s Ministry of Human Rights, which will sustain all of the Council’s expenses.
The Council’s role will be to foster research and studies of human rights, as well as to promote civil campaigns in favor of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Former president Jair Bolsonaro was against any form of support for the LGBTQIA+ community. He famously declared that he’d rather his son died than coming out as homosexual.
But Lula seems to overturn virtually every policy of the former president. Under Lula’s previous presidency terms, Amazon deforestation reached its all time low, a trend reversed with Bolsonaro. Now, Lula is back promoting the preservation of the Amazon rainforest, as well as every other major rainforest in the world.
Lula’s climb to power, however, was rigged with many difficulties.
The 2022 Brazil general elections
The elections that outed Bolsonaro took place in October 2022 and were the tightest in the country’s democratic history. Bolsonaro did not immediately accept the results, as many feared a military overrule of the central government.
Brazil has been a fierce military dictatorship until 1981, therefore a fallback into authoritarianism would not have been unprecedented for the country’s standards. Indeed, Bolsonaro had many friends among the military leadership, and often declared he would take power with brute force were his party to lose.
Despite these threats, Bolsonaro fled the country following the result, finding residency in Florida, USA. While Bolsonaro was on American territory, his supporters attempted a coup in Brasilia, the country’s capital.
Hundreds of Bolsonaro supporters stormed Brasilia’s centers of governments, only to find them completely empty. The assault, which happened almost exactly two years after the failed Washington Capitol assault in 2021, was a spectacular failure.
The assault only increased Lula’s legitimacy to power, which in turn promised a serious retaliation on the revolters.
Last week, Bolsonaro returned to Brazil after three months in the USA. Now, Lula’s grip to power is unquestioned, and he will be able to run Brazil the way he is constitutionally allowed.
