Brazil buries the PSDB, the game that for three decades was the great rival of the PT of Lula

The party that led Fernando Henrique Cardoso to the presidency of Brazil (1995-2002), which for three decades disputed power with the Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Workers Party (PT), is about to disappear. The Brazilian Social Democracy Party prepares its fusion with another acronym after languishing from the irruption of Jair Bolsonaro, which radically changed the political landscape of the greatest democracy in Latin America. The recent escape of the most relevant figure that was left, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul, Eduardo Leite, 40 years, is the last nail in the coffin of a party that was the great PT antagonist from the end of the dictatorship until, in 2018, Bolsonaro took out the most conservative right and with it he won those elections.

Cardoso, the man who in the nineties managed to domesticate prices with the real plan and end the hyperinflation that martyred Brazilians, led the PSDB to the top. Twice he won the presidential elections in the first round. The 93 -year -old president is retired from public life, but during the pandemic he still gave interviews and participated in acts per video call. Without him, the Tucanos lost their main symbol because he left power but continued to participate very actively in the public and intellectual debate. The leaders and supporters of the PSDB have always been known in Brazil by the name of the bird with which they share the colors.

With the growing polarization fed by the Lava Jato corruption scandal and the struggle of the most extreme right, the PSDB was blurred, losing its identity. Once he finished his monopoly of antagonism against the Workers Party, it was no longer clear if he was a social democrat – the label that Lula always claims for himself – if he was liberal, conservative or what rays. If at its peak almost 130 seats came to add, now it has ten times less representatives between the two cameras.

The PSDB was founded in 1988, three years after the end of the dictatorship, in São Paulo, which with the homonymous state was always emblem and fief of the Tucanos. The progressive decline was incontestable in the last municipal ones, in October 2024. His candidate for mayor of the metropolis, José Luiz Datena, a presenter of the events of events of events, took less than 2%. For greater scorn, he did not achieve a single councilor. In the last elections to Governor of São Paulo, in 2022, his applicant or Siquera managed to go to the second round in a elections that the blessed by Bolsonaro, Tarcisio de Freitas, a former military who had never played an choice and now governs the economic engine of Brazil.

One of the most striking leaks was that of Geraldo Alckmin, who at 72 is vice president of Lula. Great figure of the PSDB, was twice governor of São Paulo. But, with the game in frank setback, as soon as Lula proude him as number two to form a wide front against Bolsonaro, he did not think twice. He immediately accepted. He left the acronym in which he militated 33 years and in a jiffy hugged the political project that until doing nothing had been his main rival.

Alckmin and Governor Leite are RARE Av In a country where hundreds of politicians change the game as a jacket and that even has a signing window so that the deputies change acronym. He militated in the PSDB all his life, since he joined the age of 16. But the unstoppable drop in the irrelevance of the party clashes with the presidential ambitions of a politician who presents himself as the renewal from a right -handed center. A few years ago, the governor of Rio Grande do Sul made public who is homosexual and publicly presented his partner, a pediatrician. Brazil in general, and its particular electorate, assumed it with absolute naturalness despite the prevailing conservatism.

The day he formalized his departure from the PSDB and his incorporation into the new acronym, Leite referred with these words to his change of political home: “The circumstances of the political and electoral scenario, both in Rio Grande do Sul and in Brazil, demand new paths.” He had been flirting with the idea of ​​the move until he decided to take a step that other members of the party gave before.

A good part of the old PSDB positions have been installed in the Social Democratic Party (PSD), which despite the similar name with the PSDB is one of the so many Brazilian formations without any ideological ground. The main asset of the PSD is its leader, Gilberto Kassab, probably the most powerful man in the interwoven of Brazilian politics. A guy who prefers the background and is a perfect stranger for the vast majority.

The decay of the PSDB began after the 2014 elections, when Aecio Neves lost in front of Dilma Rousseff for three points. The Tucano cried fraud, which was not true, as the party itself admitted years later. Neves is one of the few who remains faithful to the acronym. The formation, which began this 2025 with three governors, has already lost two. Leite and the head of the Pernambuco government, Raquel Lyra, who also marched to the acronym of Kassab. The party of former Cardoso president still has a governor, that of Mato Grosso do Sul, but his presence in national politics is null. And everything seems to indicate that it will follow in the footsteps of its co -religionists.

What remains of the PSDB has decided to merge with a formation called Podemos. Certified is the death of a party that was central in the Brazilian policy of the change of the century.