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Is the Workers' Party (PT) in Brazil in power as of 2025 and who is its leader?
Executive summary
As of the sources provided through mid-2025, the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) is the party of Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who returned to the presidency in 2023 and is commonly identified as the PT’s leading figure [1] [2] [3]. Internally, however, the party was holding a high-stakes leadership contest in mid‑2025 with contenders such as Edinho Silva and other figures jockeying for the national PT presidency, reflecting active debate over who formally leads the party organization [4] [5].
1. The PT is the president’s party — so it is “in power” at the national level
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a PT founder and its most prominent leader, returned to the presidency with the 2022 election and leads the federal executive branch; multiple sources state the PT “came back to power” with Lula’s 2022 victory and that Lula returned to the presidency in 2023 [1] [3] [2]. That situation makes PT the party of the sitting president and places it at the center of national government, even as it faces institutional limits from Congress and other actors [3].
2. Distinguishing the party’s political power from internal party leadership
Being “in power” (controlling the presidency) is not the same as who holds the PT’s internal party presidency. Reporting from late 2024–mid 2025 shows an internal PT leadership struggle and formal elections for the party’s national president — more than 1.6 million members were scheduled to vote in July 2025 to choose the party’s national president — indicating that the PT’s organizational leader can be different from the country’s president [5]. Reuters reported Edinho Silva as “in line to become the leader” of the PT in December 2024, describing an internal shift in who would head the party apparatus [4].
3. Who is (or is likely to be) the PT’s national leader according to reporting?
Two strands appear in the files: longstanding identification of Lula as the PT’s key leader in public and historical profiles (encyclopedic and biographical sources identify Lula as the party’s leader and founding figure) [6] [3], and contemporaneous reporting that Edinho Silva was emerging as the likely next national president of the party in late 2024 and was a front-runner during the PT’s 2025 internal elections [4] [5]. Available sources do not provide the definitive July 2025 election result within the documents you supplied; they report the contest and candidacies but do not state a final winner [4] [5]. Therefore, the best synthesis is: Lula is the national leader in the sense of being the country’s president and PT’s defining political figure, while Edinho Silva was reported as poised to assume the party’s formal national presidency in internal elections underway in 2025 [4] [5] [3].
4. Why this distinction matters for politics and messaging
The split between “party leader” and “country leader” matters because party presidents manage internal organization, membership mobilization, and candidate selection, while a sitting president leads government policy and national messaging. Sources note internal PT debate about reconnecting with voters and the “new working class,” and the party’s poor municipal results and congressional weakness — issues Edinho Silva himself addressed as part of his pitch for party leadership [4] [5]. Simultaneously, analysts and historical accounts emphasize Lula’s outsized symbolic role as PT founder and the face of the PT in public life [6] [3].
5. Internal tensions, declining support and the upcoming 2026 calculus
Reporting and commentary emphasize that the PT faces declining popular support in some elections, internal disputes, and a fraught road to the 2026 presidential contest; that context explains why the 2025 internal leadership vote was framed as “the most important in the party’s history” by critics inside the PT [7] [5]. The World Socialist Web Site piece and other reporting highlight worry within the PT that organizational choices could affect Lula’s re-election prospects and the party’s cohesion [7] [5].
6. Caveats and limits in the available reporting
The sources provided document (a) Lula’s status as the PT’s dominant national figure and the party’s return to the presidency in 2023 [1] [2] [3], and (b) the existence of a contested internal leadership election in mid‑2025 with Edinho Silva as a leading candidate [4] [5]. They do not, in the set you supplied, include a certified post‑July 2025 result naming the winner of the PT’s internal national presidency; therefore I cannot assert who formally holds the PT presidency after that vote without further sources [4] [5].
If you want, I can (a) look specifically for the official July 2025 PT internal election result, or (b) produce a short timeline that separates “party figurehead” (Lula) from the party’s organizational presidency (Edinho Silva as reported front‑runner).