Elections in Brazil: Lula’s incredible return from prison

The beard is still white, the hair is less gray and sparse, but the silhouette is still the same. Lula, 76, granted Favorites of Brazil’s presidential election to be held this Sunday (A final poll, this Saturday evening, found him 50% valid votes against 36% for his rival, Jair Bolsonaro), much since his two terms as head of this giant of the 2000s and Americas Latin. Nothing has changed.

He is a symbol of the Left in his own country, but also across the world. A personality who, like elsewhere here, is affected by the corruption scandals that have affected him. His opponents do not hesitate to remind him.

During the last presidential debate (this Thursday, September 29), all his opponents brought up these old cases to try to discredit him. ,Because they don’t have much against him, they have a good two-time record.”Frédéric Lault, director of the CEVIPOL Center for the Study of Political Life at ULB, explains.

Passive corruption and money laundering

How to form an opinion on Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, amid a positive balance sheet and allegations of corruption? Let’s go back to the scandals that affected him, which cost him 580 days in prison, and after which the charges against him were dropped.”for a procedural defect“, let’s summarize a little early.

,In 2017, he was sentenced to 9 years in prison and then 12 years on appeal in 2018 for passive corruption and money launderingRemembers Laurent Delcourt, a researcher at CETRI (Centre Tricontinental). For years, it saturated the Brazilian media space. We made him the mastermind of the system of corruption,

If the Petrobras scandal (named after this Brazilian oil company) disintegrated his party (the Workers’ Party), there was no direct evidence of his involvement. They have been accused of primarily profiting from personal gain (especially an apartment) to favor private companies in awarding public contracts.

,But Judge Morrow, who imprisoned her, never proved that Lula was the owner of the apartment. He relied on his intimate conviction about Lula’s guilt without legal evidence.”Frederick Lault says, “The author ofBrazil in 100 questions. endless emergence(Tlandier).