Judge tells Lula to surrender
SÃO PAULO: A federal judge on Thursday ordered former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil to surrender by yesterday afternoon and begin serving a 12-year prison sentence on a corruption conviction.
The warrant was issued hours after the country’s top court rejected Mr da Silva’s bid to remain free while appeals of the conviction were considered.
The judge, Sergio Moro, wrote in the arrest warrant that da Silva would be held in a special cell, outside of the general prison population, in consideration of the “dignity of the office he held”. Mr da Silva will be “allowed to surrender to the federal police in the southern city of Curitiba, where his trial was held”, he said. He set a deadline for 5 pm yesterday.
Mr da Silva’s Workers’ Party remained defiant on Thursday, vowing that he would still run for a third term in October, despite the Supreme Federal Court’s 6-5 ruling early on Thursday.
The president of the Workers’ Party, Sen. Gleisi Hoffmann, told journalists that Mr da Silva had not given up on his quest to return to the presidency. “Lula remains our candidate, first of all because he is innocent”, she said.
Mr da Silva, 72, kept a low profile on Thursday, receiving visitors in his office at the Lula Institute in Sao Paulo, including party leaders and his hand-picked successor, former president Dilma Rousseff.
While Mr da Silva is not the first Brazilian leader engulfed in scandal — former President Fernando Collor de Mello stepped down to avoid being impeached in 1992, and Rousseff was impeached on charges of manipulating the budget to hide economic problems. Mr da Silva’s fall is striking nonetheless. He left office eight years ago with a record approval rating of 87%, and held an ample lead in polls for October’s presidential election.
Mr da Silva’s imprisonment sends a message to other prominent political figures caught up in investigations. The threat of jail time has been one of the most important tools in the Lava Jato, or Car Wash investigations, which has ensnared not only Mr da Silva, but also dozens of business and political leaders, including President Michel Temer.