Luis Ignacio Lula Da Silva during a political rally. File photo.
Lula finally confirmed that he would compete in an election against Jair Bolsonaro. However, the former president clarified that he would do so under certain conditions: “If I am in the best position to win the presidential elections, and I am in good health, yes, I do not doubt it,” he told a French magazine that interviewed him.
According to recent polls, the leader of the Brazilian Workers’ Party would defeat the current president in the first and second rounds.
According to Datafolha, in a first vote, Lula would get 44% of the vote, compared to only 23% for Bolsonaro. In the second round, the former president would prevail with 55% of the vote compared to about 32% for the far right candidate, Brazil’s current president.
In the interview with Paris Match, Lula spoke frankly about the reasons why he believes he was a good president, which would still hold for his future presidency.
“Under my mandate, Brazil became an important actor on the world stage,” said Lula. The South American country established good and solid relations with the continent, Europe, the US, Russia and China, he added.
Haunted by a judicial set-up (lawfare)
Until now, Lula had not clearly answered the question of whether he would be a presidential candidate against Bolsonaro. He always left that aspiration to the result of consensus with the other parties to configure an alliance that is solid enough to overcome the current leader.
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The former president recovered his political rights last March, when the Federal Supreme Court annulled a process against him.
The PT leader spent 580 days in prison and was disqualified from running for electoral office. For that reason, he could not appear in the 2018 elections, a race in which he was also the favorite in the polls. Now, the landscape has altered following Lula’s confirmation that he will run.
Regarding Sergio Moro, the judge who convicted him in a process that was later proven to have been rigged, Lula recalled that he told him: “He is condemned to sentence me because the lie has gone too far and he has no way of going back.”
Featured image: Luis Ignacio Lula Da Silva during a political rally. File photo.
(RedRadioVE) by Carlos Arellán
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
