Ex-Brazil president is vowing to fight on
Da Silva surrenders to begin 12-year corruption prison term Da Silva is carried by fans outside the union headquarters.
Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, long hailed as a standard-bearer of the global left, ended a dramatic two-day standoff with authorities on Saturday, turning himself in to face a 12-year sentence on corruption charges. He has vowed to stage his political comeback from prison.
The move intensified the roiling political drama in Latin America’s largest nation and turned a man former president Barack Obama once called “the most popular politician on Earth” into the region’s most famous prisoner.
His jailing underscores the scope of the corruption probe known as Operation Car Wash, bringing down political and business leaders across Latin America, in which Lula is by far the biggest figure yet to fall.
Lula waded through crowds of supporters and surrendered to authorities Saturday evening after a tense impasse in which he avoided prison and hunkered down in the steelmakers union where he launched his career four decades ago.
His backers, linked arm-inarm in a human chain, tried to prevent his exit, even as a motorcade of police streamed toward the union building outside Sao Paulo.
“I will comply with the order,” Lula told hundreds of supporters surrounding the union earlier in the day. Later, he was carried off the stage at the headquarters on their shoulders as they chanted his name and showered him with flowers. “That way, they will know I am not afraid. I am not running. I will prove my innocence.”
Lula has vowed to run for reelection from prison, which in his case will be a private, 160-square-foot room with unfettered access to lawyers and family members in the southern city of Curitiba. But Brazilian law will likely disqualify him from running.
His legal troubles have left Brazil’s October presidential race — in which he was the frontrunner — wide open, with analysts saying there is now room for out-of-the-box candidates, including a deeply religious conservative decried by the left for his stance on wom- en, gays and lesbians.
While Lula is expected to anoint an alternate to replace him in the elections, his popularity is unlikely to transfer to another candidate. One-third of Brazilians are expected to cast blank protest votes, according to the latest polls.
“We see the return of this ‘us versus them’ dynamic, of poor versus rich, educated class against the working class, a theme that will dominate the electoral cycle,” said Alexandre Bandeira, a political consultant in Brasilia. “The question is whether he can maintain the activism of his supporters from behind bars.” Anti-Lula demonstrators sounded horns and lit fireworks as a police motorcade escorted the former president to the police station in Sao Paulo. The day before, demonstrations for and against the former president blocked more than 50 highways around Brazil, according to local media. In his hometown, supporters set tires on fire to protest his imprisonment.