Lula launches presidential campaign to ‘rebuild Brazil’, calls Bolsonaro administration ‘criminal’
- Campaign launch sealed a remarkable political comeback for Lula, four years after the 76-year-old leftist icon was jailed on controversial corruption charges
- Lula leads all polls to return to the job he held from 2003-2010, but his advantage against the far-right Jair Bolsonaro in the October election has narrowed
The campaign launch sealed a remarkable political comeback for Lula (2003-2010), four years after the 76-year-old leftist icon was jailed on controversial corruption charges.
“We’re ready to work not only to win the election on October 2, but to rebuild and transform Brazil, which will be even more difficult,” the charismatic but tarnished steelworker-turned-politician told a rally in Sao Paulo, standing before a giant Brazilian flag.
Speaking in his trademark gravelly voice, he said Bolsonaro – whom he did not mention by name – had made Brazil a “pariah” with polarising policies, attacks on democratic institutions and surging destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
“We need to change Brazil once again … We need to return to a place where no one ever dares to defy democracy again. We need to send fascism back to the sewer of history, where it should have been all along,” he told a cheering crowd of thousands, calling on “all democrats” to join him.
It was hardly a secret Lula, who has enjoyed a long – though shrinking – lead in the polls, would jump into the campaign, which does not officially start until August.
He has been in unofficial campaign mode since March last year, when the Supreme Court annulled the corruption convictions that sidelined him from politics.
