Ex-president chooses former rival as running mate

SAO PAULO — Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has chosen a past rival to be his running mate in October’s election. The pick appears to be aimed at improving the leftist’s appeal to centrist voters and shoring up his lead in early polls over incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro.

Da Silva held a meeting Friday at a Sao Paulo hotel with Geraldo Alckmin, a three-term governor of Sao Paulo state who ran against da Silva in the 2006 presidential elections. The selection of Alckmin depends on final approval from the executive committee of da Silva’s leftist Workers’ Party, which is widely expected to ratify the pick. The decision will come this week.

“No one has more experience to be vice president than Alckmin,” da Silva said at the event that was broadcast live. “This ticket, if confirmed, is not only to win the elections. Maybe it is easier to win the elections than the task we have ahead to recover this country.”

Alckmin, 69, is a devout Catholic who worked as a country doctor in his early life. The soft-spoken politician stepped into the spotlight in 2001 when, as deputy governor, he inherited the Sao Paulo governorship and used privatizations to finance state investments. He returned to the job in 2011 and was re-elected four years later.

Da Silva’s choice of Alckmin is largely symbolic, as the former governor isn’t a political powerhouse in his own right, according to Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo.

“Lula (da Silva) still needs more organic relationships. There’s no broad coalition yet. What is fundamental to Lula is to get deals with centrist parties. He needs to reduce the resistance of business leaders,” Melo said.

In the 2006 race, da Silva accused Alckmin and his allies of planning the near-total privatization of Brazil’s state-run companies. The former governor responded by donning a vest bearing the logos of several such companies, claiming he would instead strengthen them. Alckmin, for his part, accused da Silva and the Workers’ Party of trying to purchase a dossier containing falsehoods about his allies. Da Silva and his party denied any wrongdoing.

At the event on Friday, the two appeared to have put any bitterness behind them.

“This is not a time to be selfish,” Alckmin said alongside da Silva. “This is a time for generosity and union.”