Brazil’s hero of the left is back to challenge Bolsonaro

Lula launches a blistering attack on President Jair Bolsonaro in a speech seen as the start of his campaign to return to power.

Lula addresses supporters at the headquarters of the metalworkers’ union in Sao Paulo, his political base. Picture: Getty Images

Brazil’s former left-wing leader, celebrating the annulment this week of corruption convictions against him, has launched a blistering attack on President Jair Bolsonaro in a speech seen as the start of his campaign to return to power.

“This country doesn’t have a government,” said Luiz Inacio da Silva, known as Lula, in an address to supporters on Thursday AEDT at the headquarters of the metalworkers’ union in Sao Paulo, his political base. He called the right-wing leader an “imbecile” and ­attacked his economic policies and approach to the pandemic.

On Tuesday, a supreme court judge annulled all corruption convictions against the former president, who served 18 months in prison after he was found guilty in 2017 on a series of charges including receiving bribes and money laundering. The judge ruled that the court that convicted Lula, as he is commonly known, did not have jurisdiction in the case. He argued Lula should have a retrial in the capital, Brasilia. A final decision on the ruling by the entire supreme court is awaited.

Recent opinion polls suggest that Lula, 75, is the best-placed politician to unseat Mr Bolsonaro, 65, in the October 2022 elections. A recent poll put support for him at 50 per cent, with 38 per cent of voters backing Mr Bolsonaro.

In his speech on Thursday AEDT, Lula said his trial and conviction was “the biggest judicial lie in 500 years of Brazil’s history”.

His was the flagship case of a massive investigation into a “car-wash” corruption scheme that ­exposed endemic criminal behaviour in the country’s political and business circles, with politicians seeking and receiving bribes in return for handing out lucrative public contracts. Lula has always protested his innocence.

The former president, once lauded by Barack Obama as the world’s most popular leader and credited with lifting millions of people out of poverty during a commodities boom that coincided with his 2003-11 rule, accused Mr Bolsonaro, a former army paratrooper, of destroying Brazil’s reputation.

“This was once the most ­admired country in the world,” he said. “The people don’t need arms. The people need jobs,” he added, deriding Mr Bolsonaro’s pro-gun policy.

Mr Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 in a contest that did not include Lula, as he was barred at the time because of his bribery convictions.

On Thursday AEDT, Lula said he planned to “fight tirelessly” for Brazil, and that he wanted to resume touring the country after he had been vaccinated against the coronavirus next week.

Some analysts see a showdown in the 2022 election between Lula and Mr Bolsonaro as exactly the sort of contest the incumbent might relish. Mr Bolsonaro will “go back to what he likes best: fight an anti-communist crusade”, Oliver Stuenkel, a political scientist at the Fundacao Getulio Vargas institute in Sao Paulo, commented on Twitter.

THE TIMES