RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Lula is also a defendant in nine more cases and under investigation in other inquiries on suspicion of corruption or having committed crimes such as money laundering, influence peddling and forming a criminal organization.
In addition, he is the main leader of a party that was swept from power amid a serious economic and political crisis in the country and allegations of a number of improprieties involving his and Dilma Rousseff’s management.
In short, a biography to bury once and for all the career of any public man in the world.
Despite this heavyweight record, Lula withstood the challenge on the left political spectrum. His ability to regain his lost prestige among the majority of the population after the plentiful list of misdeeds is debatable. On the left, however, he continues to be the biggest name in Brazil.
One of the most interesting data from the survey conducted by VEJA/FSB on the 2022 presidential elections, held between October 11th and 14th, is the projection of what would happen in a second-round confrontation between Jair Bolsonaro and the best known left-wing personalities.
Lula loses to Bolsonaro by 46 to 38 percent (margin of error 2 percent plus or minus), but he does better than politicians not in jail. Fernando Haddad of Lula’s party PT, who was beaten by Bolsonaro in the last election, would again lose to the current president in 2022 by 47 to 34 percent.
According to experts, Lula continues to be a strong left-wing alternative because he adds the loyalty of the PT base to the memory of the fleeting times of prosperity of his era in power.
Lula’s return to the political game still hinges on the enormous path he must take in court to clear his record. But this path seems much less difficult to follow today than it did a few months ago. On October 17th, the Federal Supreme Court revisited the issue of imprisonment after an appellate court ratification of a criminal conviction in Brazil.
The reversal of the appellate court decision would pull Lula out of jail, but would not be enough for his political pretentions, because he would still be ineligible under the Clean Record Law, which vetoes the candidacy of a felon whose conviction has been confirmed.
For the same reason, Lula refuses to accept the progression to the work-release regime to which he has been entitled since September for having served one-sixth of the sentence and having had good behavior.
The change in status would allow him to leave jail to work, or even be placed under house arrest, although unable to run for election, as he would still have a criminal record.
The former president maintains that he will only leave jail if his innocence is acknowledged – he believes that to accept the remedial measure would be to agree with the conviction handed down by then judge Sérgio Moro and confirmed by the 4th Region Federal Appeals Court (TRF4) and by the STJ.
The trial that really matters to Lula is the appeal that petitions for a declaration of bias by Judge Moro, based on several allegations, ranging from the procedures in relation to the leftist to accepting the invitation to be Bolsonaro’s Minister of Justice, and for having assisted the Federal Prosecutor’s Office in the prosecution, as demonstrated in dialogues disclosed by The Intercept Brasil website in partnership with media outlets such as VEJA.
If the theory of bias prevails, the trial that rendered the leftist ineligible will be nullified. In this case, he will no longer have a “dirty” police record and may run for office in the elections.
In the VEJA/FSB survey, Bolsonaro appears numerically ahead in almost all scenarios.
In a similar survey conducted in August this year, he was already leading, something that was to some extent obvious to someone who won the elections less than a year earlier, but who also showed great resilience in the face of several hardships faced in the period.
The fires in the Amazon, international wear and tear, the controversies surrounding his sons, and the endless conflicts in the PSL party, including allegations of using “paper” candidates for election.
Although representing the greatest threat from the left-wing, Lula’s potential return to the electoral stage could, despite the paradox, be good news for the current president, since it would allow him to repeat the victorious speech that brought him to power: to conjure up the ghost of PT’s past.
Bolsonaro still has two potential strong rivals on the horizon. According to the VEJA/FSB poll, in second round simulations, the president loses to Moro (38-34 percent) and beats TV host Luciano Huck (43-39 percent), in both cases at the 2% limit of marginal error. According to experts, the predicament of both is to reach the second round.
If they succeed in overcoming this obstacle, Huck and Moro pose a peculiar situation, according to the poll: they attract voters from the left who, by rejecting the current president, would vote for anyone in order to defeat him.
The TV host refrains from declaring his candidacy but has kept an agenda of meetings focused on the discussion of the country’s problems. Unaffiliated with any party, but a militant of supra-partisan political renewal movements such as RenovaBR and Agora!, he has spoken with leaders of different parties – the latest speculation is that he would join Cidadania.
The former Lava-Jato judge also denies that he is a presidential candidate, saying that he supports Bolsonaro for reasons of loyalty, as he said recently in an interview with VEJA, but neither Bolsonaro nor his closest allies believe this. Moro’s electoral potential is enormous.
Moro is ahead in four second-round scenarios. In addition to beating Jair Bolsonaro, he also beats Haddad, Huck, and Lula. In the same survey, the former Lava-Jato judge and current Minister of Justice is named the best government minister by 31 percent of respondents, well above second place, Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, with six percent.
Today, Lula’s work would be very difficult, even among part of the left, which has long advocated the overcoming of “lulacentrism”. Regaining voters lost to Bolsonaro will also be a priority for PT.
Lula spends part of his time in the cell watching evangelical programs on open TV and writing down the names of the pastors and the ideas they are advocating, in an attempt to recapture, when he is released, this religious group that had supported him, but migrated to Bolsonaro.
The threat to Bolsonaro’s re-election, right or left, will be greater or lesser depending on the president’s performance.
Alon Feuerwerker, a political analyst with FSB, says the “captain” must be careful to avoid some “Macri effect”, a reference to Argentine President Mauricio Macri, who is likely to lose the election to the Kirchnerist left due to the economic crisis.
“President [Bolsonaro’s] main competitors are two names who are not affiliated to any party and who cannot even run in 2022: economic stagnation and the unemployment rate,” he said.
Source: Veja