Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced on Monday that he intends to speak with “all political forces” to form a “democratic bloc” against the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, with a view to the second round of the elections on October 30.
“Right now, there is 60% of the Brazilian people who reject this government” and, therefore, “we have to close agreements and talk with everyone,” Lula said in a statement to the press, after meeting with his campaign committee, in a hotel in Sao Paulo.
(Also read: Lula and Bolsonaro start an aggressive dispute for the second round in Brazil)
The leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) gathered his main allies just one day after winning the first round of the elections with 48.4% of the vote, compared to 43.2% obtained by the far-right leader.
The result was somewhat bittersweet, since several polls had predicted that Lula would be elected president in the first round, but Bolsonaro showed a strength that no poll reflected.
From the leadership of the PT they insist on reinforcing the message that the result was “a victory” and they show that the party, led by Lula with an iron hand since its foundation in 1980, has been resurrected in just four years.
In 2018, Lula was in prison, for corruption convictions that were annulled last year, and Bolsonarism was on the rise. But 2022 came close to winning in the first round, partisan sources point out.
(You may be interested in: Brazil: What do Bolsonaro and Lula lack to win in the second round?)
A turn to the center
To avoid surprises in the ballot, Lula now wants to unite the defeated candidates in the first round around his candidacy.
The first objective is to seek the support of the center-right senator Simone Tebet and the Labor leader Ciro Gomes, third and fourth in the presidential race and who together add up to just over 7% of the support, some 8.5 million votes. For the moment, both asked for time to pronounce themselves.
The president of the PT and coordinator of Lula’s campaign, Gleisi Hoffmann, also extended this call to Soraya Thronicke (0.5%), a candidate for Unión Brasil (center-right), a party with which they have also begun to speak.
(Also: Brazil: the keys to the close presidential election this Sunday)
“It is time for all democrats to unite so that we can preserve and expand our democracy,” ecologist Marina Silva, who was elected federal deputy and who reconciled with Lula for these elections, told reporters.
Silva stressed that it is “everyone’s responsibility” to stop “Bolsonaro’s war” against “public policies and institutions” in the country.
Although for this he asked “to be very careful” and “not treat all the people who voted” for the retired Army captain as “fascists.”
“We need to have a lot of humility to have that dialogue,” he added.
It’s time for all Democrats to come together so we can preserve and expand our democracy
More direct was the former governor of Sao Paulo Márcio França, who also allied himself with Lula, although he did not achieve his goal of being elected senator, being defeated by a former Bolsonaro minister.
(You can read: Bolsonaro: ‘The change can be worse; look at Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela’)
Speaking to journalists moments before the meeting with Lula, França demanded that the former mechanical lathe operator, who ruled Brazil between 2003 and 2010, take a further turn towards the center and try to seduce a priori Bolsonarist redoubts.
In this sense, he called attention to small farmers, militarized police officers and evangelicals, the latter group mostly aligned with Bolsonaro in defending ultra-conservative values, such as the rejection of abortion.
“We have to broaden the conversations,” he asserted.
*With information from EFE
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