The former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva This Saturday he presented his candidacy for the presidential elections, for which all the polls place him as the maximum favorite ahead of the current ruler, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.
“It is a very special moment in my life, special for counting on you, for having achieved for the first time to gather all the progressive political forces around my campaign“, Lula affirmed in an act in a convention center in Sao Paulo, where hundreds of militants surrounded him.
The latest polls give Lula, leader of the leftist Workers’ Party (PT) about 45% of voting intentionscompared to the 30% that Bolsonaro, leader of the Brazilian extreme right, would obtain in the elections on October 2.
Lula’s candidacy had been given as a fact for months, but he is already running as a candidate for the Presidency of Brazil, a position he held between 2003 and 2010.
The former president has joined all the progressive forces in his cause, with the aim of creating a front as broad as possible capable of confronting the parties of the right and extreme right that they are with Bolsonaro, who will try to renew his mandate.
That coalition was presented today under the name “Let’s go together for Brazil.” With a huge Brazilian flag in the background, Lula, dressed in a suit but without a tie, made a speech in defense of the sovereignty of Brazil and the social impulse during his government (2003-2010).
“We have a cause: to restore the sovereignty of Brazil,” said the former president, who added that the Bolsonaro government is dismantling it, “destroying the public policies of millions of Brazilians.”
In this Saturday’s act he participated telematically, after testing positive for covid-19, the former governor of Sao Paulo Gerald Alckmina liberal political veteran, fervent Catholic and who will be the vice-presidential candidate of Lula’s ticket.
“When Lula held out his hand to me, I saw in that gesture much more than a sign of reconciliation between two historical adversaries, I saw a call to reason,” Alckmin said in a video.
The election of Alckmin, who was Lula’s opponent in the 2006 elections, is a turn to the center of Lula and a gesture to show an image of economic moderation, especially in the face of the financial markets. “We are going to show that economics and social justice are not opposites,” he said.
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