Brazil’s Lula loses appeal against his conviction

A BRAZILIAN appeals court on Wednesday upheld former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s conviction for corruption, dealing a body blow to his hopes of running for re-election this year.

The three-judge panel sitting in the southern city of Porto Alegre unanimously ruled that his original 9.5-year jail sentence be extended to over 12 years.

As the judges presented their verdicts, Lula was hundreds of kilometres away near Sao Paulo, addressing former colleagues in the powerful metalworkers’ union he once led.

Thousands of Lula supporters rallied in Sao Paulo to protest the verdict. Wearing a short-sleeved black T-shirt, the 72-year-old was defiant, telling the crowd of around 10,000 that he intended to run for the presidency despite the court setback.

“Now I want to run for the presidency,” he said to wild cheers. “They can take away my rights; no big deal. What I’d like to differ with them on is the conscience of the Brazilian people. Mandela was put in prison and then he came back and became president of South Africa.”

One of the judges, Joao Gebran Neto, said in his ruling that during his 2003-2010 presidency, Lula was one of the architects “of a sophisticated scheme of fraud and corruption” that had weakened Brazil’s entire political system.

A defiant Lula said before the judgment that he would continue to fight “for the dignity of the Brazilian people” and insisted he had committed no crime.

Lula is likely to remain out of jail for many months. He is expected to challenge the conviction through higher courts, initially in the Superior Court of Justice and ultimately in Brazil’s Supreme Court. However, Wednesday’s ruling deals a severe blow to his hopes of running in this year’s presidential election, which he was favoured to win.

“It complicates his plans to run for the presidency this year, but it doesn’t finish them altogether,” said market analysts Capital Economics in a note.

“The unanimous verdict is important since it reduces the avenues of appeal that are now open to Lula. That being said, it does not close them off completely. If pushed, we would say that there is still something like a 30 percent chance that he ends up on the ballot.”

The deadline for registration of candidates is August 15. The Workers’ Party has until September 17 to replace Lula as their candidate, if necessary – three weeks before the first round of the election on October 7.