Brazil’s leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has launched his campaign for a historic fourth term and vowed that as long as he lived he would not allow the “shameless” right to return to power. Addressing a sea of supporters in São Bernardo do Campo, the industrial city where his political career began nearly half a century ago, the 80-year-old politician reminded voters of the chaos and violence that unfolded during the 2018-22 presidency of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose son Flávio Bolsonaro will face Lula in October’s presidential election. Lula recalled how hundreds of thousands of citizens died during a Covid outbreak Jair Bolsonaro was accused of bungling with his anti-science policies.
Gun ownership soared as laws were relaxed, allowing criminal groups to expand their arsenals. Lula also said he would improve security by targeting the rich organised crime bosses who lived in luxury apartments. But the guy running the show lives in a penthouse … and we need to stop this,” Lula said.
He also told his far-right rivals to “show some shame”. Lula was speaking at the Vila Euclides football stadium, where his astonishing rise to the presidency began in 1979 when, as 33-year-old union leader, he spearheaded two historic strikes that helped end the military dictatorship. Those strikes made Lula a household name and in 2002, after three failed attempts, he won a landslide victory to become his country’s first working-class president.
During Lula’s first two-terms, from 2002 until 2010, he was credited with fighting hunger, dramatically expanding social welfare programmes and access to higher education, and improving Brazil’s global standing, although his administration was blighted by corruption scandals. His successor, Dilma Rousseff, became Brazil’s first female president but led the country into a severe economic recession before being controversially impeached in 2016. In 2018, Lula was jailed for alleged corruption and he spent 580 days in prison before the supreme court quashed his conviction.
Lula’s imprisonment allowed Bolsonaro to win that year’s election, ushering in four years of environmental destruction and international isolation. In 2022 Lula won his third term, defeating Bolsonaro by a razor-thin margin and vowing to rescue the country from “one of the worst periods in Brazilian history”. A week later, far-right radicals rampaged through the capital, Brasília, in a botched attempt to bring Bolsonaro back.
Bolsonaro was jailed in 2025 for 27 years for plotting that failed post-election power grab. Flávio Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old senator, launched his campaign on Sunday with an event on Rio’s Copacabana beach, previously the scene of huge rallies in support of his father. Polls suggest Lula holds a slender advantage over Bolsonaro, with 43% of intended votes to his rival’s 40% in a run-off which will take place on 25 October if, as expected, no candidate secures 50% of the vote in the 4 October first round.
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