BRASÍLIA, DF (FOLHAPRESS) – The PSDB held a seminar this Thursday (24th) in Brasília to present the party’s new guidelines after the defeat in last year’s elections and said it was following a path that did not represent either Jair Bolsonaro (PL) or Lula (PT).

The party made a move to rescue guidelines from the past, including the toucan logo, and internally rehabilitated federal deputy Aécio Neves (PSDB-MG), recently acquitted by Justice.

The parliamentarian was teased by supporters and received on stage with a disapproval from the president of the acronym and governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite.

“I want to give a special salute to Aécio for the end of the extensive ordeal in a process that was instituted and revealed to be unfounded accusations and that has now been completely dismissed by the Justice” , said Leite.

“So, you can now proceed, Aécio, with your biography, with everything you did as governor for the state of Minas Gerais, as president of the Chamber of Deputies and an extensive list of services rendered to Brazil. You can now proceed with Justice by your side”, he added.

At the end of July, the TRF-3 (Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region) upheld the acquittal of the federal deputy on charges of corruption in the JBS case, for the crime of passive corruption, six years after the revelation of Joesley Batista’s audios.

At the toucan event, the leader was widely applauded and broke the protocol to pass the word to the deputy from Minas Gerais. “I never doubted that this day would come”, said Aécio, thanking Leite for the “compensation”.

The deputy, who was a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in 2014, being defeated by Dilma Rousseff (PT), said he still has no doubts that the party will once again be the protagonist of public life.

Last year, the party had the worst electoral result in its history, in yet another chapter of the crisis that led the party, for the first time in its existence, to be left out of the race for the Planalto.

The toucans elected three governors in the second round, but at the polls they lost the historic control they had over São Paulo, and no senators were elected either. In the Chamber, the acronym saw its already small group of 22 federal deputies reduced to 13.

The 2023 PSDB rescues the toucan in the logo, excised four years ago, under the management of Bruno Araújo. On Eduardo Leite’s t-shirt there was a sentence by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, which says: “We fight not to win the next day, but to create an alternative horizon“.

The party presented new pillars, such as a competitive economy open to the world, but sustainable, in addition to reinforcing public policies, but with a lean public machine.

Leite complained that the party was, in recent years, affected by the Lula-Bolsonaro electoral polarization and its leaders forced to take a stand. In the second round of last year, the toucan stayed on the wall.

“We are here after this whole discussion process to say that we are neither Lula nor Bolsonaro. It is not simply that we are neither, we are PSDB, which has DNA, vision, purpose for the country, a way of doing politics and we are trying to rescue that. In this reconnection with the party’s original sentiments, naturally with an updated view within this new context“, he told journalists after the event.

Asked if the downtown avenue is wide for running, he said that, if not, he will open space, because he believes that electoral polarization will be overcome. “I am sure that Brazil does not want to remain with this radicalization, tension in the political environment. When this is overcome, the PSDB will be the alternative”, he said, hopefully.

Regarding an assessment of the Lula government so far, the governor recognized “serenity” in the political environment, but criticized the president’s statements that, according to him, reinforce the “us against them” discourse.

“From a political point of view, there is a bit of serenity of spirit, although the president often ends up also talking about relativizing democracy”, he said, referring to Lula’s speeches about democracy being a relative concept.