Far from Lula’s inauguration and management, Eduardo Braga shows signs of discredit in Brasília

Paula Litaiff – From Cenarium Magazine

MANAUS – Minister of the petist government (2015-2016), Senator Eduardo Braga (MDB-AM) shows signs of lack of prestige in the third term of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT). Mr. Braga was not seen in the inauguration of the head of the Executive, was not inserted in ministries and does not show strength to indicate the second echelon of the new federal government.

The senator was a candidate for the Government of Amazonas, last year, election in which he was defeated even with the support of the president. In the state of Amazonas, Lula registered 51.10% against 48.9% for Jair Bolsonaro (PL), in the second round. The leaders who supported the president in Amazonas were divided over their support for Braga. The senator ended the second round with 43.35% to 56.65% for the re-elected governor, Mr. Wilson Lima (União).

Mr. Braga is currently leader of the MDB in the Senate. In reading the lawyer and political analyst Helso Ribeiro, the apparent distance of Braga may be due to grievances of the members of the Workers Party (PT).

“We cannot deny that in the National Congress he is one of the hundred important heads. It is a fact that there are some who like and others who hate the senator, this is even normal. In short, a more traditional wing of the PT does not like him having been a minister of former President Dilma, at first abstaining, and then voting for her impeachment. It looked like a betrayal”, says Mr. Helso.

The lawyer understands, still, that the absence of Eduardo Braga in the decisions of national politics impacts, negatively, in his leadership in Amazonas. “I think the MDB Amazonas is very centered in the figure of Braga, so that if we see the last elections, the results were negligible”.

Ministerial exit

Mr. Eduardo Braga served as Minister of Mines and Energy from December 2014 to April 2016, when he handed over the post to President Dilma Rousseff. At the time, the then minister, who was already part of the PMDB, the party of the also then vice-president Michel Temer, claimed medical leave and declared that he would not participate in the vote of the president’s impeachment process.

“I leave with the feeling that we have done a lot. We arrived here under a major energy supply crisis, hydrological crisis, tariff crisis, economic situation of short-term settlement, living a dramatic moment, the distributors having serious and serious difficulties. And we have overcome these stages, one by one, and now we are trying to give an opportunity for these programs to continue”, Braga declared at the time.

In July of the same year in which he left the ministry, Braga returned in the decision to abstain and decided he would vote for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, a month later, on August 30, 2016. The petista had her mandate impeached by 61 votes to 20 and Eduardo Braga was part of the list of 61 names that voted in favour of Mrs. Rousseff’s impeachment.

Consecutive defeats

Since leaving his second consecutive term as governor of Amazonas (2003-2010), Braga has tried to return to office and failed. Before 2022, he lost the state election in Amazonas to his “political father”, Mr. Amazonino Mendes (Citizenship), in 2017, who won the “buffer” election after the cassation of former governor José Melo.

In 2018, Braga almost lost his mandate as senator of Amazonas to former Amazonas lawmaker Luiz Castro (PDT), after the scandals involving his name in the Lava Jato operation, in which he was snitched on for suspicions in the state government. In the fight for the second contest, Braga started by losing in the vote count to Castro, and ended up winning with a 0.79% difference.

CENARIUM MAGAZINE tried to contact the senator’s advisory, but did not get a return.