Twelve years after leaving power with a stratospheric approval rating (87%), former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will officially enter the presidential race on Saturday.
The icon of the left, better known as “Lula”, must announce his candidacy in front of 4,000 supporters gathered at a congress center in São Paulo.
This is the sixth time that the Workers’ Party (PT) leader has been a candidate in the presidential election. A strong and important figure in the Brazilian political scene, Lula led the country from 2003 to 2010.
Due to the lack of a candidate who will make a third way to survive, only Lula can defeat the current far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, whom he will remove from all polls.
The fight promises to be bitter between two rival men and angry with each other. The presidential election, which will take place on the 2nd and 30th of October next, will testify to the intense polarization of this emerging country with 213 million inhabitants.
When I left the presidency, I never thought of being a candidate againLula told American magazine this week Time.
But the former trade unionist believes his legacy of reducing inequality and promoting social policies has become destroy.
I believe I can do more and do better than I have ever donehe said to Time.
election revenge
But the context was somewhat different. Economic growth, coupled with rising commodity prices, has allowed Lula to lift 30 million Brazilians out of poverty.
This new candidacy has a taste of revenge for the former president, whose ouster in 2018 allowed the easy election of Jair Bolsonaro.
Imprisoned for one and a half years for corruption, until November 2019, the former metal worker seems far from returning to politics. But the reversal of his Supreme Court judgments in March 2021 was a game-changer.
Lula always says he was the victim of a political conspiracy designed to prevent him from competing in 2018 when he was the favorite in the polls. But for millions of Brazilians, Lula and the PT still contains unbearable corruption.
In addition to her image problems, Lula has sown anxiety over recent polemical statements about abortion, the police and the middle classes.
In his interview with Timehe also attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, great comedian (…) putting on a show and is also responsible war in his country than his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Writer Paulo Coelho in a tweet denounced theverbal incontinence by Lula and, according to The Barrierthe very entourage of the former head of state encourages him to rest a bit.
Different groups flirt
From next week, Lula will leave for the campaign and cross the country – as Presidential candidate Bolsonaro has been doing for months – starting in the state of Minas Gerais, in the southeast.
If he really wants to win the election, Lula should take to the streets, like Bolsonaro, to be closer to the voters.said toAFP Sylvio Costa, founder of the site Congress in focus.
Lula chose 69-year-old centrist Geraldo Alckmin to be her running mate. The former governor of São Paulo, if he didn’t have Lula’s charisma, was there to reassure the voters of the center and the moderate right.
He will soon meet the powerful agricultural lobby and evangelicals, who played a major role in Bolsonaro’s election.
But from his home Alckmin has had to participate in the launch of the campaign since he was declared positive on COVID-19 on Friday.
Source: Radio-Canada
