Argentine president professes worries about Lula’s fate in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Argentina’s president Alberto Fernández warned on Sunday, April 11th, that in Brazil “the persecution” against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva “intends to restart”, and requested the justice system of the South American giant to sustain the ruling of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to annul the trials against the ex-head of state.

Fernandez highlighted, through some messages on his Twitter account, that the Supreme Court’s decision to “annul the trials that had determined Lula’s conviction by removing the judge and prosecutors who intervened in the case” was of singular relevance.

“It made evident the actions of different factors of power (political and media) that conditioned the administration of justice in order to deny a citizen the possibility of competing in elections,” he said in reference to the decision.

Likewise, the annulment of the conviction dictated by the Supreme Court “left in all of us, defenders of the Rule of Law, the conviction that the judicial system of our beloved Brazil had preserved the democratic institutionality”.

However, according to the Argentinean President “in these days, we see with concern that the persecution of Lula is trying to restart using the same bad practices that were used before”, to emphasize that “to reverse the decision taken by the Supreme Court due to media and political pressures would mean an institutional setback for Brazil and an incalculable damage for those of us who claim the Rule of Law as the basis of democracy”.

Fernández considers that Lula is a democratic leader not only for Brazil, but also for the entire Latin American continent.

“The persecution that imprisoned and condemned him unduly represents a stain that Brazil does not deserve and that the Supreme Court has begun to clean”, demonstrating how capable the Brazilian justice system is in the face of “self-review preserving the correct administration of Justice”, he indicated.

On March 9th, Brazil’s Federal Supreme Court annulled the convictions against the former president in connection with the “Lava Jato” corruption scheme and restored his political rights, thus opening the possibility for him to run again for public office, about which he claimed last week that he could run for president next year “if necessary”.

Lula was sentenced to 12 years and one month in prison for the crimes of passive corruption and money laundering for accepting the luxury triplex in Sao Paulo as payment from the construction company OAS for his political favors and was imprisoned on April 7th, 2018.

His conviction disqualified him as a presidential candidate for the presidential election of October 7, 2018, which led to the presidency of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.