By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Seen by some as merely a substitute for former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, this year’s PT (Workers Party) presidential candidate, Fernando Haddad, has been able to garner enough support to most likely run against first-placed Jair Bolsonaro in the second round of elections.
“I feel the pain of many Brazilians who are receiving the news today that they will not be able to vote for the person they would like to see in the Presidency,” said Haddad in his first speech when accepting the candidacy.
“You are feeling the pain I am feeling, but now is not the time to go home. We are going to the street to win these elections,” he concluded.
And it seems that many of Lula supporters answered his call. The latest poll, released on September 28th has Haddad with twenty-two percent of the votes, against Bolsonaro’s twenty-eight percent for this year’s presidential elections, scheduled for October 7th and 28th (second round).
Haddad started to get noticed when he went to Brasília to work as special advisor to the Finance Ministry Guido Mantega in 2003. While in office, he was invited by Tarso Genro, then Minister of Education, to be executive secretary.
When Genro left the Ministry due to the mensalão scandal, in 2005, Haddad took over the Ministry and only left during Dilma Rousseff’s Administration, in 2012, to run for mayor of São Paulo.
Haddad served as mayor of one of the most populous cities in the world from 2013 to 2016. His time in city hall, was marred by crisis, and Haddad left the post with a rejection rate of over forty percent.
In early September 2018, after registering as Lula’s VP in the PT party, he was named as the party’s presidential candidate, replacing former President Lula whose candidacy was barred by the country’s Superior Electoral Court due to the Ficha Limpa (Clean Slate) law.
Replacing Lula has not been easy for Haddad, whose name less than a month ago, was unknown in one of Lula’s largest stronghold: the Northeast. Before the substitution announcement many there thought his name was Andrade and thought he was just Lula’s spokesperson at rallies, not the VP candidate.