The Workers’ Party future, now with Lula

This weekend, the center-left Workers’ Party embarks on its first party conference since former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the political group’s ultimate leader, was released from jail. While the three-day event is unlikely to result in any concrete changes within the party, many will be paying attention to key figures during the convention in an attempt to answer the million-dollar question in Brazilian politics today: with Lula out of jail, how will the Workers’ Party, and the opposition as a whole, behave?

Lula was benefited by a Supreme Court ruling on the possibility of defendants beginning to serve their prison sentences before they have exhausted all of their appeals. As the former president’s corruption and money laundering conviction may still be questioned by the Supreme Court itself, Lula was allowed to leave jail on November 8.

Since that date, pundits have been scrambling to analyze what Lula’s release means for Brazil’s political conjecture. Some reckon that the former president’s time in jail has radicalized him, meaning Lula is gearing up for an all-out war of polarization with President Jair Bolsonaro, squeezing the political center in the process.

Others see Lula as taking a conciliatory stance, establishing a dialogue with the wider left and center in a bid to reclaim the majority ahead of the 2022 presidential election. This is a side of the former president we have seen many times before, jokingly nicknamed “Peace and Love Lula.”

Lula, no more ‘Mr. Nice Guy’

Initially, those predicting a more extreme version of the Workers’ Party leader appeared to be correct. In his first speeches upon release from prison, he unleashed a tirade of insults against Jair Bolsonaro and his government of “militiamen.” He denounced a “rotten group” within the justice system, led by the “scoundrel” Sergio Moro, and he dubbed Economy Minister Paulo Guedes...