Election in Brazil: Ex-President Lula confirms candidacy

In the Brazilian presidential election, incumbent Bolsonaro faces a strong opponent. Former President Lula has announced his candidacy and is currently leading the polls.

Almost six months before the presidential elections in Brazil, former head of state Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced his candidacy. The ex-president is applying in a team with Gerardo Alckmin, who is a former governor of the state of São Paulo and a former rival of Lula.

“Uniting Democrats of All Races and Colors”

When announcing his candidacy, Lula campaigned primarily for centrist parties for a future coalition: “We have to unite democrats of all origins and colors to oppose and defeat the totalitarian threat of hatred,” said the left, referring to the current one Government of far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro in front of thousands of Labor Party supporters, unions and political allies in São Paulo. “Everything we have done and what the Brazilian people have achieved is being destroyed by the current government,” he accused Bolsonaro.

In addition, the 76-year-old attacked the incumbent head of state again because of his course in the corona pandemic. The president is partly responsible for the approximately 660,000 deaths in Brazil, said Lula. In addition, the current government has driven millions of people into poverty through rising inflation and high food prices. “We will not give up – not me, and not our people. The cause we fight for keeps us alive,” Lula told his supporters.

First Presidency from 2003 to 2011

Lula ruled Brazil from 2003 to 2011. He lifted millions of people out of poverty with social programs. Brazil also boomed economically during his tenure. However, corruption also flourished under his presidency in the region’s largest economy.

In the run-up to the 2018 elections, which Bolsonaro eventually won, Lula was sentenced to 12 years in prison for corruption and money laundering. He had always dismissed the investigations against him as politically motivated. In March last year, a Supreme Court judge overturned all judgments against the leftist ex-president, and the UN Human Rights Committee also described Lula’s exclusion from the 2018 elections as unlawful.

But the left still has many enemies in the right-wing conservative camp, with 37 percent of Brazilians categorically rejecting it. Again and again he causes heads to shake in the progressive camp, for example with a statement in an interview with the magazine “Time” on the Ukraine war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is just as responsible for him as Putin, the Brazilian explained: “He wanted war. If he hadn’t wanted war, he would have negotiated a bit more. That’s the way it is. I criticized Putin when I was in Mexico- city ​​and said it was a mistake to invade. But I don’t think anybody’s trying to make peace right now.”

Lula leads Bolsonaro in polls

Brazil will elect a new head of state on October 2nd. According to polls, Lula is ahead of Bolsonaro, who is running for a second term, in the early election campaign. Meanwhile, this has repeatedly cast doubts on the reliability of the electronic voting system. Experts fear that he – like his role model Donald Trump in the US – could refuse to admit defeat in the elections.

With information from Anne Herrberg, ARD Studio Rio de Janeiro