Geraldo Alckmin and Lula: From Rivals to Allies

Mosco revisits Alckmin’s turn from accusing Lula and the PT of corruption to joining him on the presidential ticket.

From Demanding a Criminal Investigation to Becoming Partners
A Brief Manual of Geraldo Alckmin’s Miraculous Amnesia
By Dr. Nelson Jorge Mosco Castellano

After 12 years of government, a narrow majority of the Brazilian people hit repeat on Lula da Silva.
Some because they are very pleased with his generous redistribution of other people’s money; others because they refuse to give up and still hope that the man who has perpetuated deficient governments will flagellate himself, acknowledge his follies and simply walk away.

From Political CSI to the Comfortable Office

There was a time when Brazil needed neither political analysts nor intelligence agencies to investigate corruption: all it had to do was tune in to a Geraldo Alckmin speech.
With the solemnity of a stern judge denouncing the theft of the people’s money, and the rigidity of papier-mâché, the perennial PSDB leader used to slip into the role of private detective to warn us about the dangers of the red populism embodied by Lula, co-founder with Castro of the São Paulo Forum.
But politics, that tender discipline in which principles weigh less than a wet napkin, gave us one of the loveliest transformations in Latin American magical realism: the day the “crime scene” became, by sleight of hand and thanks to a profitable exercise in personal survival, a cozy air-conditioned office overlooking the Palácio do Planalto, complete with a shared presidential ticket.
Alckmin understood the machinery of bastard politics: if you pursue a corrupt man until he is jailed for stealing while in power, his friends in the judiciary force his release and he becomes a candidate again, admit defeat and join him.

When the Statesman Thought He Was Sherlock Holmes

Let us go back to December 2017. Alckmin had just taken over the national presidency of his party with the epic air of a man who believed himself called upon to save the Republic from the claws of the devil; namely, the aforementioned Lula.
With clenched jaw and a voice trembling with republican indignation, he gave us gems worthy of an anthology:
“Depois de ter quebrado o Brasil, Lula diz que quer voltar ao poder. Ou seja, meus amigos: ele quer voltar à cena del crimen.”
“After having wrecked Brazil, Lula says he wants to return to power. In other words, my friends: he wants to return to the crime scene.”
Those were the days!
One could almost see Alckmin roaming the streets of Brasília with a magnifying glass and yellow Crime Scene, “Do Not Cross” tape, ready to arrest mafia-ridden history itself in the name of Brazilian decency.
For decades, the gospel according to Saint Geraldo consisted of explaining to voters that the Workers’ Party was a gang of incorrigible outlaws who had come to loot even the seagulls of the São Paulo coast, Christ the Redeemer and the waves of Rio.
The rallies were displays of moral purity: the PSDB stood for technical modernity, fiscal seriousness and good taste, while Lulism was institutional chaos personified.
How could anyone forget the dramatic tension of the 2006 election debates, when Alckmin looked at Lula as if he had stolen the little children’s lunch at daycare?
During their years of confrontation, Alckmin delivered some of the harshest criticism of Lula, of the Workers’ Party (PT) governments and of their leader, an old raider wearing a presidential sash.

Corruption Accusations and the Mensalão Scandal

In the 2006 presidential election, when they faced each other in the runoff, Alckmin focused much of his campaign on attacking Lula over corruption scandals in his administration, particularly the Mensalão.
Alckmin argued that the PT government had institutionalized impunity and described Lula as “the portrait of a party engulfed in corruption.”
He systematically accused Lula’s administrations of unbalancing the public accounts, wasting state resources and showing profound slowness in implementing key structural reforms, including tax, labor and political reform.
He argued that inertial economic growth was due to favorable international winds rather than solid state policies.
At some meetings he could be heard muttering vade retro, to distance himself from the evil leftist.

The Miracle of Spinal Elasticity

But of course, prolonged political exposure is very cold, even in the Brazilian Caribbean.
Going from untouchable governor of São Paulo to watching your party collapse at the polls while Bolsonarism snatches away the traditional right is excellent shock therapy for curing any rigid ideological conviction and the stubbornness of accusing a former inmate when that leads to no practical result.
Then came 2022 and, suddenly, criminal geography underwent a fascinating investigative reassessment.
Amoral pragmatism, now in the fullest extent imaginable.
That gloomy 2017 “crime scene,” the little country place and the apartment, was redecorated with eclectic taste: the walls were painted immaculate white, indoor plants were installed, ergonomic armchairs were purchased, and the place was renamed the “Broad Democratic Front.”
What happened to Alckmin’s police arrests? Where did the forensic evidence go? It evaporated on the altar of the purest sinful pragmatism.
Alckmin suddenly discovered that the “crimes” of the past magically expire when you are offered the vice presidency.
Why insist on systemic corruption when you can form an electoral ticket with the very “principal offender” himself, in exchange for a little institutional relevance and a couple of ministries for your friends?

Epilogue: Love After the Cell

Today we watch Geraldo Alckmin smiling, dressed in immaculate suits, displaying the sobriety of an institutional vice president who attends cocktail parties and receives ambassadors.
He no longer investigates crimes; now he co-manages them with astonishing efficiency.
He has accomplished the miracle of having his once-investigated criminal-partner abandon the ideas of the left; the very ideas he carefully built, that carried him into government and markedly improved his wealth. Shh, sorry.
Geraldo is patient. He waits, mourning suit at the ready, for alternation; not through the vote of citizens, but through “biology.”
The moral this beautiful political love story leaves us is deeply reassuring: in the world of personal interests, there is no enemy that a good division of power cannot turn into a soulmate.
In the end, the fiery speeches about green-and-yellow republican morality were nothing more than the tantrum of a jilted opposition figure; tired of so many failed Sherlock imitations, the vice presidency is better.
Because, let us be honest: what does a “crime scene” that leaves you a little country place and an apartment matter when what is at stake is getting the magnifying glass back onto power?

Alckmin and Lula
Political pragmatism
Ideological contradiction

Continue reading in Global Order and Geopolitics