The former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva this Saturday he launched his candidacy for the presidential elections in October with a message of “hope” and willing to do “the greatest peaceful revolutionof the history of Brazil.
“We want to return so that no one will ever dare to challenge democracy again And for what fascism be returned to the sewer“, Lula said, an act in a convention center in Sao Paulo, where he was surrounded by hundreds of militants, parliamentarians, artists and union and social representatives.
Dressed in a suit, but without a tie, the former head of state (2003-2010), favorite for the elections on October 2, solemnly read a speech, with a huge Brazilian flag in the background, whose green and yellow colors in recent years have been appropriated by the followers of the current Brazilian president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
Lula wanted to leave a message of “peace” and “love” in front of the “totalitarian threat, hatred, violence, discrimination, exclusion weighing on” the country.
Throughout his speech, he made no direct mention of Bolsonaro, his greatest political adversary and who appears second in the polls with 30% of voting intentions, compared to close to the 45% they give to Lula.
Although the far-right leader, implicitly, was present in each of his words. “Everything we did and the Brazilian people conquered is being destroyed by the current government (…) It is more than urgent to restore the sovereignty of Brazil “, he sentenced.
Lula denounced that “Brazil returned to the UN Hunger Map” and defended the protection of the Amazon against Bolsonaro’s policy of environmental “devastation”, which has led to record deforestation rates in the Amazon. “We need to change Brazil again“, said Lula, who reviewed the initiatives of a social nature during his two terms in office and that allowed 30 million Brazilians to be lifted out of poverty.
During most of his speech, the progressive leader put aside the emotion and nerve that characterizes him to avoid controversy and slips, as when a week ago he implied that the police are not people, statements for which he apologized. That most statesmanlike Lula, 76 years old, who was received like a rock star, under shouts of “president, president” and in the company of his partner, the sociologist Rosângela da Silva, 55 years old and with whom he will marry next On the 18th, he disappeared in the last five minutes of his speech when he put aside the papers. “We are going to make the greatest peaceful revolution that the history of Brazil has ever seen“, he claimed.
It will be the sixth time that the name of the former union leader will dispute the Brazilian presidential elections. He tried in 1989, 1994 and 1998, and won in 2002 and 2006.
In 2018, the year in which Bolsonaro won, he also sought the Presidency, but the Electoral Justice prevented him from doing so because he was convicted of corruption. However, Lula regained his political rights in March 2021, when the Supreme Court annulled the two sentences that weighed against him and for which he spent 580 days in prison.
In this Saturday’s act he participated telematically, after testing positive for COVID-19, the former governor of Sao Paulo Geraldo Alckmina veteran liberal politician, a fervent Catholic and who will be running for vice president with Lula.
“When Lula held out his hand to me, I saw in that gesture much more than a sign of reconciliation between two historical adversariesI saw a call to reason,” Alckmin said in a video. The election of Alckmin, who was Lula’s opponent in the 2006 elections, is a turn to the center of Lula and a gesture to show an image of economic moderation, especially against the financial markets.
Hundreds of supporters from various regions of Brazil attended the event, which was held in a convention center in the northern part of the city of Sao Paulo. There was no shortage of PT flags and war songs like “Brazil urgent, Lula president“. Red predominated, despite the former president’s campaign’s attempt to return to the green and yellow colors of the Brazilian flag.
“Lula represents everything to me“, Pedro Luiz da Silva, a member of the National Movement of the Homeless Population and who spent 20 of his 61 years living on the streets of Sao Paulo, told Efe. This Afro-Brazilian with dreadlocks and a deep gaze attributes getting out of that situation to the social policies of the Lula government “I managed to get out thanks to law 12,305/2010,” he expresses exactly, alluding to the text that helped street garbage recyclers.
Source: Lasexta
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