Brazil presidency or prison for Lula
COURT’S VERDICT EXPECTED TODAY
Brazilian politicians, voters and investors will find out today whether an appeals court will allow the country’s most popular leader, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, to run for president this year after being found guilty of accepting a bribe.
The former two-term leftist president was convicted in July of corruption and money laundering for accepting a beachside penthouse apartment from an engineering company vying for government contracts.
If the court’s three judges uphold the conviction, which carries a sentence of nine years and six months, Lula would be ineligible to run for re-election on the October 7 ballot and he could be sent to jail.
That would radically alter the political landscape of Brazil ahead of a campaign in which Lula is the early favourite, with 36% of voter preferences according to pollster Datafolha. That is double the percentage of his nearest rival, the far-right congressman captain Jair Bolsonaro.
The case has polarised Brazil, with Lula’s critics calling for him to be put behind bars and his Workers Party supporters claiming the charges were trumped up to stop him from running.
The appeals court, known as the TRF-4, has confirmed 95% of the convictions and sentences handed down by crusading anti-corruption judge Sergio Moro, who sentenced Lula.
Brazil’s benchmark Bovespa stock index has risen more than 10% in the past month on the prospect of Lula being barred from the election sooner than originally expected.
That would improve the odds of a more centrist, market-friendly candidate winning this year’s race and continuing austerity policies to reduce a budget deficit run up by Lula’s impeached successor, Dilma Rousseff.
Lula, 72, has been touring the country preparing the ground for a presidential bid. CUT, Brazil’s largest labour union federation and an ally of the Workers Party, plans to launch his candidacy in Sao Paulo the day after the ruling, whichever way it goes.
The party’s leader, Senator Gleisi Hoffmann, went as far as to say last week that authorities would have to “kill” people to put Lula in prison, though she later qualified her comment after it created an uproar.
Lula planned to travel to Porto Alegre yesterday to rally his supporters, though the court denied his request to address the judges amid criticism he was turning the case into a pulpit for alleging political persecution.
About 3 000 Lula supporters arrived in the southern city of Porto Alegre on Monday and intend to protest outside the court, which has been cordoned off by police in a four-block radius.
Lula’s opponents plan to celebrate in a park on the affluent side of Porto Alegre tomorrow if his conviction is upheld. –