Within the Workers’ Party (PT) they are pressuring Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to place Fernando Haddad, who already held the Education portfolio with him in his first term, at the head of the Finance Ministry, as a way of giving him visibility for his possible candidacy for the 2026 presidential elections.
Haddad, who could not win in these elections for governor of Sao Paulo, is one of the names that sound to occupy one of the new portfolios. Next to his are those of PT president, Gleisi Hoffmann, or old acquaintances such as former ministers Alexandre Padilha, Aloizio Mercadante and Marina Silva.
From the PT they defend Haddad’s presence in some important ministry as a way of gaining relevance and paving the way for his possible candidacy for the 2026 presidential elections, to which Lula has already said he will not run.
The idea of Lula’s new government to implement public works construction policies to generate jobs could help Haddad to show himself as a suitable candidate to assume the Presidency in the future, although the risk lies in an eventual economic crisis.
Who will occupy the Ministry of Finance remains one of the main unknowns of the new team of a Lula who already in the campaign indicated that he preferred a person with a high political profile, capable of negotiating the government’s proposals with one of the most conservative congresses of the last decades that awaits him.
In this sense, Haddad would not be among the candidates due to his lack of experience in this field, so other names are being mentioned, such as senators-elect Wellington Dias and Camilo Santana; the governor of Bahia, Rui Costa; the aforementioned Padilha, Minister of Health under Dilma Rousseff; and even the man who will be her vice-president, Geraldo Alckmin.
In case Lula opts for a more technical profile for this portfolio, the newspaper ‘O Globo’ claims that former Central Bank president Henrique Meirelles and Pérsio Arida are the most likely.
