Former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva defended this Saturday the secular state and rejected the use of the Church as a “political stage”, at a campaign event in Sao Paulo, 43 days before the elections in which he seeks to return to the presidency .
“I defend the secular state; the state does not have to have a religion (…) and the churches do not have to have a political party,” Lula told thousands of people who attended the rally in the Anhangabaú Valley on an exceptionally cold day. a park located in the center of the São Paulo capital.
“There are people who (…) are making the Church a political stage or a company to make money,” he accused, to applause, in a tacit allusion to his main political rival, President Jair Bolsonaro.
The far-right president constantly appeals to Christian values to retain the evangelical population, an important group of his electoral base, which represents a third of Brazilians, about 70 million people.
“When I want to talk with God, I don’t need parents or pastors; I can lock myself in my room and talk with God for as many hours as I want, without needing favors,” added Lula, accompanied among others by former president Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016).
And he rejected that the Churches take care of “the candidacies of false prophets or Pharisees who are denying the people the whole day.”
At the event, a giant Brazilian flag was unfurled, a symbol that the left is trying to “recover” from the hands of Bolsonaro’s right, which uses it as a party badge.
“I am looking for hope and I think Lula is it, he is the change,” Marcos, a 52-year-old therapist who participated in the act, told AFP.
Lula leads the voting intention with 47% for the October 2 elections, compared to 32% for the far-right president, who cut the gap to 15 percentage points, according to a Datafolha poll released last Thursday.
However, Bolsonaro is the favorite among the evangelical electorate, with 49% of the voting intentions, ahead of Lula, who only has 32%.
Bolsonaro, who has appointed pastors as ministers in his Cabinet and even a judge for the Federal Supreme Court, constantly evokes this group, for example highlighting family values and his position against abortion, which Lula supported in a speech and later he retract.
The president even went so far as to say that, if he succeeded, Lula would close churches, something immediately denied by the former president.
“Respect” the result
Equally dedicated to the campaign, Bolsonaro greeted a group of supporters this morning on the side of a highway in Resende, Rio de Janeiro, who made a demonstration of support in vehicles and motorcycles.
“We are seeking re-election (…) Otherwise, it is respected. But our democracy, our freedom, above all,” he said while greeting the Bolsonaro caravan, who without evidence has questioned the reliability of the electoral system.
Bolsonaro also participated in the delivery of swords to graduates of the military academy where he himself was trained.
