Brazil: the presidential election campaign is underway

The electoral campaign for the October presidential elections officially kicked off today in Brazil with the rallies of the two candidates favored for a place on the ballot.

The current president, the octogenarian progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is aiming for an unprecedented fourth mandate and to counter the return of the right of Flavio Bolsonaro, son of former president Jair convicted for the attempted coup d'état in January 2023.

"They ask me why I want a fourth mandate. Because, as long as I am alive, I will not allow the right, responsible for 400,000 deaths due to covid due to irresponsibility, to return to power", said Lula speaking at a rally at the Vila Euclides stadium in São Bernardo do Campo, in the industrial area of São Paulo, the same one from which he led the great workers' strikes during the Brazilian dictatorship of the 1970s. "What future do you want for Brazilians if we don't invest in education, healthcare, employment?" Lula added that for this campaign he will leverage the danger of a decline in the presence of the State as a guarantor of the progress of the lower classes.

His main opponent, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, instead kicked off his campaign by speaking at a rally in Rio de Janeiro in which he accused Lula's government of being corrupt, recalling the alleged irregularities being investigated by the justice system and involving the president's son, Fábio Luís Lula da Silva, known as 'Lulinha'. "It is a government marked by corruption (...) corruption has reached Lula's office," he said, also insinuating the existence of links between the federal government and organized crime.

Also in the background of the campaign is the geopolitical context and the ambition of US President Donald Trump to impose US hegemony across Latin America through the establishment of similar governments, as has already happened in Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela. Lula together with Sheinbaum represents in this sense the last bastion of the left in Latin America.