Brazil’s ex-president running for election despite being in jail
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s Workers’ Party on Wednesday registered jailed former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as its candidate in the October elections, accompanied by about 10,000 supporters.
The procedure was carried out at the Supreme Electoral Tribunal in the capital Brasilia by former President Dilma Rousseff and Workers’ Party leader Gleisi Hoffmann, the party said on its website.
About 10,000 Lula supporters had marched to the tribunal to demand that the popular former head of state be allowed to contest the elections.
A total of at least 13 candidates, among whom Lula is far ahead in opinion polls, were due to have registered by Wednesday.
The Workers’ Party has maintained the 72-year-old as its candidate despite him having begun a 12-year prison sentence in April.
Lula was found guilty of corruption and money-laundering in connection with the renovation of a beachside penthouse, which was bankrolled by a company seeking contracts with the state oil giant Petrobras.
The Workers’ Party regards the judicial proceedings as a maneuver by the political right to remove leftist Lula from the presidential race.
“My imprisonment was the latest phase in a slow-motion coup designed to permanently marginalize progressive forces in Brazil,” Lula wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal is expected to cancel Lula’s candidacy on the grounds that the law does not allow people with criminal records to run for president. The court needs to announce its decision by Sept. 17.
The Workers’ Party might then replace Lula with its candidate for his vice president, former Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad.
Lula rose from a shoe-shiner to one of the most popular politicians in Brazil’s history. He is credited with pulling tens of millions of people out of poverty, partly through social programs financed with oil money, during his 2003-10 presidency.
Opinion polls say the second runner-up after Lula is rightwinger Jair Bolsonaro, whose populist and nationalist views have earned him comparisons with U.S. President Donald Trump.
Polls predict that if Lula were able to contest the elections, he would get about 30 percent of the vote, 11 percent more than Bolsonaro.
The Oct. 7 elections come at a time of political and economic crisis, with much of the political class tarnished by corruption scandals and the economy still recovering from the 2015-16 recession.
The election is expected to go into a second round on Oct. 28.