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On schedule, Lula completed the formation of his government. Defining the model, forming the team, considering and pointing to names, contemplating everyone – new colleagues, parties, sectors of the economy, race and gender proportionality, regional representations, is an exciting challenge. At the same time, the choices must fall within the logic of constituting a parliamentary base of support. For this strategic reason, it is possible and likely that the ministerial team will even include names that did not even vote for Lula.

It’s science, art and chance. Senator Simone Tebet dreamed of a Ministry of Social Development but woke up with a dehydrated Ministry of Planning. Two new PT ministers, already appointed, and inviting to work in their respective ministries, were, so to speak, disinvited at the last minute: they had to change plans, to accommodate conveniences and parliamentary support needs in the new government.

One had to assume that Lula would pay particular attention to the pastors of evangelical churches – who en masse launched a campaign against him unworthy of Christian virtues. Until the new president tries, choosing three evangelicals in the ministerial team: Jorge Messias (Bessias), Marina Silva and Daniela do Waguinho. But the evangelical bench acts like a political party, and has already warned that these ministers do not represent them.

The pressures come from everywhere, from those who have all the merit – background, competence, loyalty, political and ideological affinity – and from those who, out of impudence and opportunism and, in a ritual that is repeated every four years, also present themselves to requests.

Thus, the capital of the Republic, Brasilia, in the days preceding the inauguration, becomes an electrifying environment, full of information and counter-information, in which the bets are concentrated on the name of someone, who then loses of its substance and disappears from radar. . According to the backstage and news from the press, on the big stage, both dark and lit, the protagonists of the game live a unique experience, which is not in the books and cannot be bought in drugstores.

Can such a complicated construction succeed? In Brazil there are 37 ministries, in the United States there are only 15; in the UK 22, but in France there are 41 and in Canada 38. At first it seems that a smaller number of departments would have greater functionality. But there’s no way of knowing, it’s not a cake recipe.

A coherent and integrated government project would be necessary, perhaps a nation project. But this does not exist and has never – strictly speaking – existed in Brazil. It is a collection of campaign promises, somewhat disjointed, which retain little coherence and integrity between them. Everything is currently done under the primacy of governance, in the fragmented Brazilian party model, in which none of the parties alone has the conditions to govern.

At the end of the stage of constitution and formation of the government, Lula behaved very well. But whether the government will be good, only time – the lord of reason – will tell.

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