The duel of the titans should take place next October. Lula, former ultra-popular left-wing president, has just announced his candidacy for the presidential election, to run for a third term. Faced with outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro, he is already the winner and by far.
According to a poll by the Brazilian institute Datafolha on March 24, Lula is credited with 43% of voting intentions in the first round, thus sweeping away all his opponents, and in particular Jair Bolsonaro (26%). Faced with the latter, Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva would win the election by 59% in the second round, but according to certain scenarios, he could win the ballot in the first. If the gap between the two candidates has since narrowed (36% for Bolsonaro against 41% for Lula in early April, according to PoderData), Lula remains the big favorite.
Yesterday, Saturday May 7, during a very observed meeting, the former Brazilian president (2003 – 2010) also warned that he intended to “return to combat” to run for a third term in order, a- he said, to “rebuild” the country, after the “irresponsible and criminal” management of Jair Bolsonaro.
“We are all ready to work not only for victory on October 2, but for the reconstruction and transformation of Brazil, which will be more difficult than victory in the election,” said the 76-year-old man, in front of 4,000 of his supporters gathered in São Paulo.
However, in 2015, thousands of Brazilians marched through the streets of Rio, Brasilia, São Paulo, against his successor, the left-wing president Dilma Rousseff, political heiress of Lula, and the Workers’ Party (PT), founded by the ‘former president himself, accused of corruption. A movement of unprecedented magnitude since the president had been subject to an impeachment procedure, and replaced by her center-right vice-president.
As part of the Petrobras scandal, a cornerstone of the downfall of the left since 2014, Lula was accused of intervening in the awarding of contracts to the oil company, and therefore also accused of corruption. Operation Lava Jato, led by Judge Sergio Moro (later Bolsonaro’s Justice Minister), resulted in Lula being sentenced to twelve years in prison and imprisoned in April 2018. He was released for a year and half later, after a Supreme Court decision to overturn his conviction.
At the end of April this year, the UN Human Rights Committee also claimed that the investigation and prosecution of Lula, which led to his imprisonment, had violated his right to be tried by a impartial tribunal. This advice followed a complaint lodged by Lula himself with the organization after his imprisonment.
Lula’s personal trajectory speaks to many Brazilians
Despite these corruption scandals, the former Brazilian president (2003-2010) still enjoys great popularity. “For many Brazilians, the trial against the former president was a political trial. The Supreme Court, when it overturned his convictions, also affirmed that Judge Moro had been biased and therefore had acted in a biased manner”, underlines Gaspard Estrada, political scientist and director of the Political Observatory of Latin America and the Caribbean. from Sciences Po Paris. “Gradually, the image of Lula will be distinguished from the Workers’ Party”, explains the researcher.
Lula owes his popularity above all to his history and his political record. “Lula also plays on his personal trajectory, his figure. He is someone who, during the military dictatorship, had been imprisoned for his union fight at the end of the 1970s, just before creating the PT. And he also draws a parallel between his imprisonment under the dictatorship and the fact of having been imprisoned in 2018”, analyzes Frédéric Louault, specialist in Latin America and director of the center for political studies at the Free University of Brussels. “He left in the memory the image of a president who had produced development in Brazil, both economic development but also the fight against inequality and poverty”, continues the researcher.
Lula, born on October 27, 1945, comes from a large and modest family in the Northeast region of Brazil, the poorest in the country. Fleeing poverty, his family moved to São Paulo, but the mother being alone to raise her children, Lula was forced to leave school at the age of 10 to work and meet the needs of his family. In the 1960s, he was a worker, joined the metalworkers’ union at the age of 21 and, over the years, became a key figure in workers’ unionism, which enabled him to start a political career at the end of his career. of the 1980s. He was elected President of Brazil in 2003, after three unsuccessful attempts.
a positive economic and social balance sheet of Lula…
At the end of 2010, when Lula left power and handed over to Dilma Rousseff, he still held 80% favorable opinions from the population, one of the highest rates ever seen in the history of democracies in the world. His actions against hunger and poverty had been hailed all the way to the United Nations. By the end of his two terms, malnutrition in Brazil had fallen by 70% and the infant mortality rate by 47%.
A more than positive economic and social assessment on which Lula will be able to rely for the 2022 election: “The Brazil of 2010 is a Brazil that had a growth of 7.5%, with the end of hunger, and 3 6 million people who have come out of poverty and entered the middle classes… There was a very positive economic and social situation and Lula in a way embodies this hope for a return to normalcy, and above all to a return to much better days”, explains Gaspard Estrada.
“Lula has a policy that converges towards the fight against social inequalities and he has already done a lot for sectors that are currently in crisis, such as employment or health”, explains Katia Almeida Silveira, a Brazilian mother at home living in Recife. , capital of the state of Pernambuco, in the east of the country. “I support Lula because of his concern for the poorest, his concern for education, and above all because of his desire to dream again of a fairer country. The population had, in general, a better quality of life under his mandates”, abounds Iraci, his sister, now retired.
…Against a mandate more difficult to defend for Bolsonaro
The former left-wing president will obviously be able to assert his policy by comparing his record to that of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro. Many Brazilians criticize the latter for his management of the health crisis, while the former army captain has long denied the seriousness of the disease, which he has often described as “flu”. Result: more than 620,000 dead, the second most bereaved country after the United States.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, which affected all the economies of the world, the purchasing power of Brazilians had already started to decline, due to galloping inflation, which fell from 3.75% per year in January 2019, to the coming to power of Jair Bolsonaro, at 10.74% the following November. During the four years of his mandate, the unemployment rate fluctuated between 11% and almost 15%, historically high rates. Its policy on the protection of the environment, and more specifically of the Amazon, has been more than criticized, both nationally and internationally. He has also been accused several times of “crimes against humanity”. Since the start of his mandate, around 140 impeachment requests have been made against the far-right president. None succeeded, the president of the Chamber of Deputies, in charge of the procedure, being one of his political allies.
“Lula’s advantage for this election is that he can still play on the legacy he left, on the good image he left after eight years in power, when Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 without a program and will have to defend a balance sheet when he is not very skilful”, underlines Frédéric Louault.
Towards a military coup?
However, despite a rather difficult mandate, marked by scandals, Jair Bolsonaro does not plan to give up his place. The far-right president had previously said that the only possible outcomes for him were either to be re-elected, to be thrown in prison, or to be killed. Statements that hardly suggest a calm transfer of power in the event of Lula’s victory next October. According to the researcher from the Free University of Brussels, a coup attempt by Bolsonaro “is not something that should be ruled out”.
“He has already announced that there will be fraud in the next election. This is a strategy that aims to remove all public confidence in the electoral system. Already before the election, the scenario contributes to weakening Brazilian democracy”, recalls Frédéric Louault. At the beginning of May, the spokesman for American diplomacy even invited Brazilians to keep “confidence” in their electoral system, constantly flouted by the far-right president, who even wants to return to electronic voting. he does not consider reliable, even though he was elected by this system.
“So it is quite possible, seeing the election going against him, that he tries to mobilize the army and make a coup to stay in power. The question is: will the army follow him?” asks the researcher from the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
If it is not certain that the army will mobilize and march on the institutions, it is however possible to see a strong reaction from the supporters of Jair Bolsonaro in the event of defeat, as was the case on January 6, 2021 in the States United States, when Donald Trump lost the presidential election and his supporters invaded the Capitol.