Brazil elections: ex-President Lula da Silva says he wants to be a candidate again

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Saturday, November 20, in Madrid assured that he wants to again run for president of the country, but said he will decide between February and March 2022 “because there is a lot to decide.”

Lula, 76, recovered his political rights this year after the Federal Supreme Court overturned the two convictions against him for corruption, which led him to serve 580 days in prison. He made the announcement at an event of the Spanish leftist party Podemos in Madrid – following a tour of Germany, Belgium and France – and said it was based on the backing of his supporters during and after his imprisonment.

Until now, the ex-president had limited himself to saying that his party would have a candidate and that he would decide in February or March, but on Saturday he went further in expressing his desire to be a candidate, although he has not yet made a final decision.

“If I were transformed into gold I would not be able to repay my gratitude to you, it made me want to be a candidate for the presidency again,” Lula said on a stage alongside former Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, the party’s current secretary general Ione Belarra, and Communist Party secretary general Enrique Santiago.

“I am 76 years old, I am in love, I am getting married and I should say the following: I have already fought a lot, I should care for my life, but he who is born for the struggle is no longer his own master,” said the ex-president, who in recent days met with Spanish President Pedro Sánchez, French President Emmanuel Macron and former Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero.

Lula said that his trip was part of an attempt to “prove to the Brazilian people that Brazil is loved, that people love Brazil” and added that “I cannot do less than what I have already done, if I have to return and do less, then I better not return.”

Regarding the proceedings that led him to be imprisoned, he assured that – as they had “nothing” to attack him- they fabricated through the media the idea of a “gang of corruption” to later convict him with no “evidence” and pointed out that if he turned himself in it was to avoid a picture of him as a “corrupt fugitive” and added that “one day I was released, I went home with no anklet, with my head upright.”

In addition, he called for the left to make the fight against inequality in the world its banner, raised a speech against hunger and, given the right-wing’s rejection of immigration, he pointed out that “poverty is uncomfortable.”

He also advocated fighting for the environmental issue, as a matter that is neither of green parties “nor of sophisticated middle classes,” but of planet Earth, and also warned about the data industry or digital employment, which can – in his opinion – create hostages of industries that do not even know each other.