Choose your battles
By starting cabinet nominations with Fernando Haddad and José Múcio Monteiro, probably next Monday, President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva seems to signal that he needs peace in the barracks to do what he wants in the Economy. Different in everything, from the 25 years that separate them to their political trajectories, the chosen ones signal, besides Mr. Lula’s confidence, his conviction that one must choose one’s battles wisely.No one in the Worker’s Party today shares Mr. Lula’s ideology as much as Mr. Haddad. If Antonio Palocci, who turned state’s evidence with false allegations, was Mr. Lula’s greatest disappointment in the party, Mr. Haddad, who is on his way to occupy the same position, is his hope of redeeming it. As long as the military are depoliticized.The military today are divided between Bolsonarists and anti-Bolsonarists. Only the anti-Workers’ Party feeling unite them. This is part of the explanation for the preference, in Defense, of the engineer who began his public career in the PDS (a right-party from the military regime period) and, in his first election, which Mr. Monteiro humorously recounts to this day, was thrashed by Miguel Arraes in the Pernambuco state government race.Nelson Jobim was the favorite of Mr. Lula’s group, among other reasons, because he had already shown himself capable of imposing civilian authority over the military. The lack of this commodity on the shelves of the transition is recognized even by a general who once commanded Defense: "If they were from the MST [Landless Workers’ Movement], these protesters would have zero tolerance from the barracks."The invitation to Mr. Jobim, who occupied the post in Mr. Lula’s second term in office, did not happen. Host of the lunch that, last year, reconnected the president-elect with his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the former minister indicated members for the Defense group through an emissary of Vice President-elect Geraldo Alckmin.The indication ended up not happening and, in the last contact with Mr. Lula, last weekend, Mr. Jobim limited himself to easing the relations between the financial market, where he now works, and the president-elect - a field almost as mined as the one that now separates the military from the transition.Mr. Monteiro never lost contact with Mr. Lula since he left the Institutional Relations ministry of his government. Not even when, as a member of the Federal Court of Accounts (TCU), a post to which he was nominated...
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