The leftist Workers’ Party PT officially nominated Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to run against incumbent President Bolsonaro in the October election.
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was officially nominated Thursday by his leftist Workers’ Party as its candidate to run in October’s presidential election.
The politician, who served as president from 2003 until 2010, was not present at the party’s convention in São Paulo, according to Brazilian news source Globo, as he was already campaigning in his home state of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil.
According to the latest polls, the 76-year-old leads against incumbent conservative President Jair Bolsonaro in what analysts have described as one of the country’s most polarized elections in decades.
This will mark the sixth presidential bid by Lula da Silva, who has held a long and close association with the Workers’ Party.
Lula da Silva was elected for the first time in 2002 and again in 2006. Before him, three other politicians were elected twice by direct vote. According to news site Poder 360, no Brazilian has ever been elected three times by direct vote.
In 2018, he was also a candidate for the party until a corruption and money laundering conviction curtailed his plans, taking him out of the running, as Bolsonaro went on to take office in the South American nation.
In 2019, Lula da Silva was released from prison, with his convictions overturned last year after the Supreme Court ruled that the judge overseeing the case, Sergio Moro, had been biased.
The ruling meant that Lula da Silva could run for office this year after spending 580 days behind bars on corruption charges.
In a bid to attract disenchanted Bolsonaro voters, reports say Lula da Silva has softened his socialist image, picking former Sã o Paulo Governor Geraldo Alckmin, a centrist, as his running mate.
In recent days, Lula has pledged that Brazilians will be able to eat at least three meals a day if he wins the Oct. 2 election, describing it as his “commitment.”
“I want you to know that we are going to change this country,” he told his supporters in Pernambuco, noting that his policies removed “more than 30 million Brazilians out of absolute poverty.”
“I am coming back because I believe that this country needs you, and we are the spokespeople for you. It only makes sense to win if we do not forget that the poor people were not born to be poor all their lives,” he told supporters.