At 77 years old, after having chained moments of glory and setbacks of fortune during his time in prison, Lula, an unsinkable icon of the Latin American left, was elected president of Brazil this Sunday, signing his return to the presidential palace in Brasilia.
“Brazil is back!” President-elect Lula launched Sunday, advocating “peace and unity,” following his narrow victory over outgoing far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
The return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was in power for two terms (2003-2010) and saw his sixth presidential campaign bring him back to supreme office, is a first in recent Brazilian history. But Lula, who had an extraordinary destiny, has come a long way.
in prison for corruption
Convicted of corruption in the biggest scandal in Brazilian history, “Lavado express”, a bribery case involving the Petrobras company and several construction companies, he was jailed for 580 days, from April 2018 to November 2019.
The leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) has always said that he is the victim of a political plot that allowed Bolsonaro to be elected to the presidency in 2018 when he was the great favorite.
In March 2021, you can once again dream of brilliant revenge. The Supreme Court annuls or prescribes his sentences, which allows him to recover his political rights, without exonerating him from all of this.
For the UN Human Rights Committee, the investigation and trial of Lula had violated his right to be tried by an impartial tribunal.
Contrasting popularity
Today, 12 years after leaving power with a stratospheric rate of favorable opinions (87%), the immaculate Lula wants to make “Brazil happy again.”
This charismatic, raspy-voiced tribune toured the immense country, equipped with a bulletproof vest, and delivered a fierce duel to his old enemy, Bolsonaro.
Lula continues to be perceived as “close to the people” and remains well liked, especially in the poor regions of the Northeast, his historical stronghold.
But he is also hated by some Brazilians for whom he will forever embody corruption. Jair Bolsonaro, who had played a lot with the hatred of the PT to be elected in 2018, did not stop calling him a “thief” and “ex-prisoner” during his debates.
former shoeshine boy
Nothing predisposed Lula to such a fate, the youngest of eight children, born on October 27, 1945 into a family of poor peasants in the northeast of Brazil.
As a child, Lula dropped out of school to become a shoe shiner. She was seven years old when her family moved to São Paulo to escape poverty. Itinerant salesman then metallurgical at the age of 14, she lost her left little finger in an accident at work.
At 21, he joined the metalworkers’ union. In 1975 he was elected president of the powerful metallurgical union and led the main strikes of the late 1970s, in the midst of the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
He co-founded the PT, a pluralistic left-wing party, in the early 1980s with a group of workers, artists, and intellectuals, when Brazil was ruled by a military regime.
He first ran for president in 1989 and narrowly failed. After two more failures, in 1994 and 1998, the fourth attempt was successful, in October 2002. He was re-elected in 2006.
Two mandates with an emphasis on the social
The first Brazilian head of state to come from the working class, he implemented ambitious social programs, thanks to years of growth fueled by the commodity boom. Under his two terms, nearly 30 million Brazilians have been lifted out of poverty.
Lula also embodied a country that was opening up to the world and gave Brazil international stature, notably with the Soccer World Cup (2014) and the Olympic Games (2016) in Rio de Janeiro.
Idealistic yet pragmatic, Lula is a master of the art of forging sometimes unnatural alliances. For this presidential election, his running mate is a centrist technocrat capable of reassuring economic circles: Geraldo Alckmin, his opponent in previous elections.
In March 2016, his attempt to get back into business as minister to his finalist, Dilma Rousseff, was a bitter failure, as was his dismissal in August.
personal events
The path of the elected president is also marked by personal trials. When he was only 25 years old, he lost his first wife, Lourdes, to hepatitis. She was then 8 months pregnant. In October 2011, he suffered from laryngeal cancer.
Then, in February 2017, Lula lost his wife Marisa Leticia Rocco, 30, with whom he had four children.
But Lula found a new love, Rosangela da Silva, nicknamed “Janja”, a PT militant sociologist, 21 years his junior, whom he married in May. “I’m in love with her like I’m 20 years old,” he said of the woman who was active in her campaign.
A great challenge now awaits Lula, who must reunite and pacify a polarized Brazil that has been battered by four years of crisis management by his predecessor.
Source: BFM TV
