Brazil - Election 2022
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, previously served as president from 2003 to 2010. He is expected to run against Bolsonaro in October's presidential elections. Recent polling shows Lula would handily defeat Bolsonaro in the election. A Banco Genial/Quaest Pesquisas survey released 12 January 2022 found Lula would get 54% of the vote in the decisive second round of the election, with Bolsonaro garnering 30%.
The ruling that overturned former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's corruption convictions upended Brazilian politics and set up a potential election showdown with President Jair Bolsonaro – a challenge the far-right incumbent may himself relish. The decision 08 March 2021 by Supreme Court Justice Edson Fachin overturned all convictions against the former president, stemming from a probe into a massive corruption scheme centered on Brazilian state oil company Petrobras. The ruling was procedural, but it reinstated Lula's right to run for office while the cases against him play out in a different court.
Lula, who at 75 remains as charismatic as he is controversial, had always claimed he was innocent. The former steelworker says the charges against him were fabricated to sideline him from the 2018 presidential race, in which he was the frontrunner. In April that year, he was jailed for taking a bribe from a construction company in return for juicy Petrobras contracts. After more than a year and a half behind bars, a Supreme Court ruling freed him pending appeal.
The news dropped like a bomb just as Brazil geared up for presidential elections in October 2022, when the country – deeply divided over Bolsonaro's combative, in-your-face reign – will decide whether to keep the man dubbed the "Tropical Trump" for another four years. Now, the incumbent faces the prospect of a heavyweight adversary on the left, rewriting a race that had looked to be shaping up as a battle between Bolsonaro and a raft of candidates vying for the center.
"This rocks the Brazilian political scene – we now have a scenario that is totally different from 24 hours ago," said FRANCE 24's correspondent Tim Vickery. Instead of a technocratic campaign on the handling of the coronavirus pandemic, "we're now looking at something that is likely to be a lot more ideological," he added. "Lula still faces legal charges, but in order for him to lose his political rights again he would have to be convicted and then lose again on appeal, and there may not be time for that to happen before the next presidential campaign in October of next year," said FRANCE 24's Vickery.
Lula's jailing in 2018 helped Bolsonaro surge to the presidency later that year, riding the outrage with the giant corruption scandal engulfing Lula, his Workers' Party (PT), and much of Brazil's political and business establishment. But just over two years into his term, the far-right president looks vulnerable. His defiance of expert advice on fighting the coronavirus pandemic has proved a risky bet as Covid-19 has devastated Brazil, claiming more than 266,000 lives – the second-highest death toll worldwide, after the United States.
The coalition of forces that brought the former army captain to power has meanwhile frayed. Bolsonaro has clashed with both the anti-corruption faction – falling out with popular ex-justice minister Sergio Moro, the former judge who jailed Lula – and the business sector, alarmed by his increasing turn to big-spending economic populism.
The latest opinion poll, released on 07 March 2021 by polling firm Ipec, gave Lula the most potential votes in the 2022 election, with 50 percent, making him the only politician to outperform Bolsonaro, on 38 percent. Lula's return means Bolsonaro will be able to run the kind of polarised campaign he normally thrives on.
Brazil’s full Supreme Court upheld a ruling 15 April 2021 annulling former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s corruption convictions, which cleared the way for him to run for a new presidential term in 2022. In an 8-3 ruling, the court upheld Justice Edson Fachin’s March 8 decision quashing Lula’s convictions on procedural grounds, which has upended Brazilian politics as far-right President Jair Bolsonaro gears up to seek reelection in October 2022.
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