The candidate to repeat in the presidency of Brazil has lived at his 76 years an extensive career and a recent political resurrection that has led him to become the only one with the possibility of unseating Bolsonaro.
Euskaraz irakurri: Lula da Silva, abiapuntu nostalgia
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Partido de los Trabajadores) is 76 years old and, twenty years after he won his first elections, is emerging as the clear favorite to wear the Brazilian presidential sash, in his case for the third time.
Born in the Brazilian municipality of Caetés, his humble origins and workers they turned it into a mass phenomenon in its day. As a child, Lula fled hunger with his family from Brazil’s impoverished northeast to seek employment in São Paulo, the country’s most industrialized region, where he built his trade union and political career, bypassing university.
He brought the socialist revolution to the Government of Brazil for the first time, and remained in power for eight years, from 2003 to 2010.
Nostalgia permeates today all of Lula’s campaign ads, which continue to use the same slogan, “without fear of being happy”which he popularized from his first attempt to reach the Presidency, in 1989when he was a fighter union leader feared by businessmen and by the wealthy classes.
Three decades later, Lula today relies on a dozen progressive parties of diverse tendency and, to confront President Jair Bolsonaro, he has even embraced former adversaries, such as the conservative Geraldo Alckmin, his vice-presidential candidate.
political resurrection
The successive corruption scandals that were uncovered in his management and in that of his successor after his retirement, Dilma Rousseffcaused a gradual deterioration in his image.
Lula was sentenced twice for those scandals, and spent a year and a half in prisonwhich prevented him from being a candidate in the 2018 elections.
A year later, the Supreme Court annulled those two cases for procedural errors and irregularitiesreturning Lula their freedom and their political rights.
Since then, he has tried to clear his name and to defend that the reason for his convictions was purely political, to allow Bolsonaro’s electoral victory.
Despite the rejection of a large sector of the population towards Lula, due to corruption, his popularity has promoted him as the the only candidate with a chance of unseating Bolsonarowith the flag of the defense of democracy and the reminiscence of a happy Brazil.
A citizen with an image of Lula da Silva waits in line to vote. Photo: EFE
Source: Eitb
I’m Tifany Hawkins, a professional journalist with years of experience in news reporting. I currently work for a prominent news website and write articles for 24NewsReporters as an author. My primary focus is on economy-related stories, though I am also experienced in several other areas of journalism.