Brazil’s Lula May Be President Again – NRK Urix – Foreign News & Documentaries

– It is excellent that this verdict has been annulled, says Paulo George, whom I meet in the Ipanema district here in Rio de Janeiro.

-Now I hope that Lula is the leftist candidate in next year’s elections, and that we get rid of the president we have now, he says.

Others I meet think it is wrong to overturn the verdict. And many say it is a shame that next year’s elections are between Lula and the current president, the right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro.

– Brazil is deeply divided. And what the country needs is a leader who can gather

population, says María Velarde, originally from Argentina.

“Unfortunately, neither Lula nor Bolsonaro is such a unifying figure,” he says.

Political earthquake

Last Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin issued a statement that shook Brazilian politics. He had decided to overturn the corruption verdict against the country’s former president, Lula da Silva.

This means that Lula will regain his political rights and that he will be able to stand as a candidate in the presidential elections next fall.

Fachin’s fellow judge, Gilmar Mendes, arrives with fierce criticism of Lava Jato, the trial in which Lula was convicted:

– You cannot fight crime by committing crimes, says the judge.

He affirms that the verdict was a political process, where the objective was to prevent the popular politician from participating in the last presidential elections.

A stormy life

Lula da Silva’s life has oscillated between the highest peaks and the deepest abyss. It came from bad conditions in northeast Brazil. But he took an amazing class trip, rising from shoemaker to union leader. In 2003, he became president of the fifth largest democracy in the world.

During Lula da Silva’s eight years in power, 30 million people were lifted out of poverty and, when he resigned, he had the support of up to 87 percent of Brazil’s population. This despite the fact that great corruption in the government and Lula’s party was revealed.

In 2016, the former president was arrested in a major police operation. By then, the Public Ministry had drawn a portrait of Lula as the spider in a criminal network.

related to Lava Jato, the largest corruption case in the history of Brazil. And two years later he was convicted and imprisoned.

The mood changes

After 580 days behind the walls, Lula da Silva was released. Initially due to a change in prison rules. But the mood in the case was about to change.

More and more people thought it was a political process, especially after it was revealed that the verdict against Lula was probably agreed game between the judge and the prosecution.

This week the verdict was overturned and the former president made the following comment:

– I know that I was the victim of the biggest legal lie in the history of Brazil. But I always believed that injustice would end, and now it has happened, said the former president at a press conference in São Paulo.

Still popular

But Lula is not acquitted. The case is likely to be reopened in another court. Another possibility is that a unified Supreme Court opposes a judge’s decision to vacate the sentence.

However, many commentators believe that there is a high probability that the various accusations against the former president will never result in a conviction.

And Lula still has great support among Brazilian voters. In a poll this week, he and President Jair Bolsonaro are almost even. Other current candidates are far behind the two.

The verdict against Lula prevented him from participating in the 2018 elections. At the time, he was well ahead of Bolsonaro at the polls. By the whim of fate, next year’s elections may be precisely between the two.