Fernando Haddad: Lula’s Plan B
Fernando Haddad wasn’t uppermost on anybody’s mind in April, when Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva delivered a historic farewell speech hours before turning himself in to serve a 12-year prison sentence for corruption.
As he listened to the speech from the third row, Haddad drew little notice. After all, he wasn’t singled out for praise or expressions of appreciation.
But on Tuesday, the former mayor of Sao Paulo, 55, was entrusted with the most delicate of missions: standing in for the jailed Lula in Brazil’s October presidential elections.
Right on a court-ordered deadline, the sober-minded former education secretary appears to have been handed what many consider an impossible mission, replacing a candidate who is so popular that neither jail, nor scandal nor economic crisis dampened his front-runner standing in the polls.
The same polls show that Haddad, a lawyer and former university professor, is no Lula. The latest survey by pollster Datafolha on Monday gave him just nine per cent support, an improvement from a month ago. He has barely four weeks to win over Brazilian voters.
He has come from behind before, however.
The son of Lebanese immigrants who says he learnt as much about life in his father’s textile store as at university, wasn’t the most high-profile candidate when he ran for mayor of Sao Paulo in 2012. But he ended up winning.
Trained as a lawyer, with a master’s degree in economics and a doctorate in philosophy, Haddad is married to a dentist with whom he has two children. ■