Lula launches his candidacy for the Brazilian presidential elections

The former president Brazilian 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, Jair Bolsonaro.

“It is a very special moment in my life, special for counting on you, for having managed for the first time to gather all the progressive political forces around my campaign,” Lula said at a ceremony at a convention center in Sao Paulo, where hundreds of militants sheltered him.

The latest polls give the leader of the progressive Workers’ Party (PT) about 45% of the voting intentions, compared 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 only this Saturday did he run 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 to his cause, with the aim of creating the widest possible front capable of confronting the right-wing and far-right parties that 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 drive 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 event, after testing positive for covid-19, the former governor of Sao Paulo Geraldo Alckmin, a veteran liberal politician, fervent Catholic and who will be the vice-presidential candidate of Lula’s formula, participated virtually.

“When Lula extended 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 prove that the economy and social justice are not opposite things,” he said.

Source: Elcomercio

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