Workers’ Party (PT) presidential candidate Lula da Silva, Brazil, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @PrensaLatina_cu
“I will vote in favor of a history of struggle for democracy and social inclusion. I will vote for Lula,” Brazil’s former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso said.
On Thursday, Brazilian parties and politicians expressed their support for the Workers’ Party (PT) presidential candidate Lula da Silva in the second round scheduled for October 30.
The national leader of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement spoke about the work needed by left and progressive sectors within Brazil and globally to defeat the far right and save humanity
Days after the first round of elections in Brazil, Gilmar Mauro, of the national board of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement spoke to Peoples Dispatch about the challenges ahead for people’s movements in Brazil to secure the victory of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party of Brazil.
Peoples Dispatch: It has been a couple of days after the first round of the Brazilian elections. Can you give an overview of what happened in the presidential elections, and also at the federal legislative level?
Gilmar Mauro: With the elections, from the first moment, we said it would be a war, a war metaphorically speaking. A war to win the elections, a war to be sworn in, a war to make a people’s government. Lula received a lot of votes, although there was an expectation that he could win in the first round, with voter opinion polls indicating this.
It didn’t happen, but it came very close to a victory in the first round, which, of course, creates good conditions for a victory in the second round. Although no such victory is a given.
Ahead of October’s election, with leftist Lula leading the polls, fears are rising of a Bolsonaro coup – meaning it’s the entirety of Brazil’s democracy at stake.
After four years of a right-wing Bolsonaro government, Brazilians will vote for a new president on 2 October 2022. Former president Lula—currently high in the polls—is confronting an increasingly delirious incumbent, who appears to have threatened violent unconstitutional action should he lose.
Bolsonaro’s victory came two years after the impeachment of Workers’ Party president Dilma Rousseff in 2016, the first woman to be president. The Workers’ Party (aka Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT) had held office since 2003.
The period 2010-2016 was dominated by the ‘credit crunch’ crisis that sent the world into turmoil, with a generalised economic contraction, huge indebtedness in the advanced economies, and a considerable reduction in the consumption of raw materials. Brazil was badly hit. By 2015 GDP had declined by three percent, inflation was high (10 percent), and public debt went through the roof to 63 percent of GDP, making it tough for the government to maintain its poverty-eradication social policies.
BRASILIA, BRAZIL — Will the world’s sixth most populous country move away from fascism and towards a social democracy putting economic justice and anti-imperialism first once more?
That is the question on Brazilian minds right now, as earlier this month the Supreme Court dismissed all charges against former President Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva. A colossal figure in domestic and world politics, Lula was falsely convicted of fraud in 2017, and spent more than 18 months in prison, becoming, in the words of renowned academic Noam Chomsky, “the world’s most prominent political prisoner.”Read More »
Lula de Silva, then President of Brazil, delivers speech in front of large crowd in Brasilia. | Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Lula said the Brazilian President and his regime have suffered a major political setback when he regained freedom.
The former president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said that we must continue to fight to regain democracy in his country and warned that political infighting is coming against the “fascist right.”
Today tens of thousands of workers in Brazil will take the streets in a national general strike against the pension reform proposed by the government of far-right Jair Bolsonaro. To learn about the current context in Brazil today and the importance of these mobilizations we spoke to João Pedro Stedile of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement about Bolsonaro’s attacks on the working class and the need now more than ever to mobilize the masses. He also reaffirms the call to fight for the freedom of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Lula speaking to the masses. Photo: Ricardo Stuckert
On Monday, June 10, the news publication The Interceptpublished a series of reports which confirmed the political motivation behind the legal persecution of former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The reports revealed that prosecutors in the “Operation Car Wash” task force, as well as the judge presiding over the case, Sérgio Moro, worked to persecute Lula in order to prevent a return of the Workers’ Party (PT) to power, and thus contributed to the victory of far-right candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, in October 2018.
The reports are based on an archive of private chats, audio recordings, videos, photos and court proceedings that were provided to the outlet by an anonymous source. The Intercept said the materials “reveal serious wrongdoing, unethical behavior, and systematic deceit about which the public, both in Brazil and internationally, has the right to know.”Read More »
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez (R) welcomes Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at Miraflores Palace in Caracas, 2007. | Photo: Reuters
Uruguayan Senator and former President Jose Mujica said he is “with Lula with all his human solidarity: always, when it rains, it stops.”
Latin America‘s leaders are expressing their solidarity and condemning Brazil‘s decision to deny former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva‘s habeas corpuspetition as a blow to democracy.
Supporters of Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva shout words of support during a rally in Quedas do Iguacu, Parana state, Brazil
BRAZIL’S former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has vowed that neither legal persecution nor violent intimidation will stop his fight for the presidency after his campaign convoy came under gun fire.
Shots hit two buses in the caravan that has been touring Parana state in southern Brazil yesterday. Officials of Lula’s Workers Party, which has won all presidential elections since 2002 but was removed from power in a constitutional coup in 2016, said Parana was the only state not to have provided a police escort for the campaign.Read More »
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva. | Photo: Reuters
In an exclusive interview with teleSUR, Brazilian professor and researcher Sabrina Fernandes discusses former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva’s Jan. 24 corruption trial and forthcoming elections in the South American country.