The former president and opposition candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva promised this Thursday night that in the October 2 elections he seeks to return “better” to the government, admitted that there was corruption in the state-owned Petrobras, defended former president Dilma Rousseff and described the President Jair Bolsonaro as a “fool of the court” who has left the mission of governing to Congress and cannot control the country’s budget.
In a 40-minute interview with the presenters of the Jornal Nacional, on TV Globo, the most watched news program in the country that scored 31.2 rating points, Lula appeared for the first time in a media group that editorially supported the operation Lava Jato, for which he was imprisoned for 580 days and banned from the 2018 elections.
“I was massacred (on TV Globo) for five consecutive years,” said the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), which accused Operation Lava Jato of having “thrown into the mud” the prestige and independence of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
“Lava Jato came from the Judiciary to politics with the aim of arresting Lula”he told journalists William Bonner and Renata Vasconcelos, while in several cities the Bolsonaristas were carrying out cacerolazos and acts in favor of the PT leader.
Go back to take care of the povo. #LulaNoJN pic.twitter.com/YiLhsrtc5m
– Lula 13 (@LulaOficial) August 26, 2022
Lula also said that he does not want to appoint an attorney general who answers to him personally, nor does he want to name the heads of the Federal Police. If he wins the government in October, “if there is a complaint of corruption, it should be investigated,” she stressed.
“I want to go back to be better than my eight years in office. I want to go back because I want to do the things I should have done but I didn’t know it was possible to do”assured Lula, who praised the trajectory as governor of São Paulo, the country’s largest state, of Geraldo Ackmin, his opponent at the time and his current running mate, a conservative from the Brazilian Socialist Party.
The former metallurgist promised the population that they would “be happy again, with a better quality of life” and said that he set out to “pacify the country against the widespread hatred” by the extreme right, although he defended as “natural in all countries the ideological and programmatic polarization between two country projects”.
“Polarization is good in a democracy, there is no polarization in the Communist Party of China and the Communist Party of Cuba,” he stressed.
Lula was questioned about the corruption in his government and in the contracts of the state-owned Petrobras and admitted: “One cannot say that there was no corruption if there were people who confessed, but the awarded denunciation made many who admitted that they stole became richer.”
For a democrat, people need to respect self-determination twice. It’s just that I want it for Brazil and it’s just that I want it for others. #LulaNoJN
– Lula 13 (@LulaOficial) August 26, 2022
Lula listed the actions that his government carried out between 2003 and 2010 to strengthen the control agencies and criticized the decrees to impose 100-year secrecy on the actions and expenses of the Bolsonaro presidency.
But in campaign tone described Bolsonaro as a “fool of the court” -a common expression in Brazil to indicate that power passes through the other side- that he has ceased to govern and that the person carrying out the actions is the President of Deputies, Arthur Lira, of the bloc known as Central, that has executed a policy of distribution of secret items for the deputies without going through the Executive Power, in a scandal called “secret budget”.
“Bolsonaro cannot deal with the budget, the ministers call Lira, not Bolsonaro. We have to end this semi-presidentialism”, tosigned the leader of the PT.
The former president defended the agricultural production of the Landless Movement, the group of peasants that supports him and is criminalized by Bolsonaro.
Lula said that his objective is to pacify coexistence in the countryside and warned about Bolsonaro’s policy to arm the landowners.
On the other hand, Lula said that there are differences “between agribusiness that is serious and meets environmental standards to export to China and the European Union” and the Bolsonaristas who do not respect the environment and seek to illegally exploit the Amazon rainforest.
I don’t like to use the word to govern, I like to use the word to take care. This country is a future that we need to build. We are going to invest again in the generation of businesses. We have nearly 70% of families involved, mostly women. Let’s negotiate these divisions. #LulaNoJN
– Lula 13 (@LulaOficial) August 26, 2022
The candidate of the coalition that leads the PT also claimed the figure of Rousseff, his successor overthrown in a political trial that was editorially supported by the Globo multimedia. He also praised having broken the country’s occupancy record in 2014, but admitted “mistakes” such as having artificially intervened in fuel prices and given long-term tax benefits to the industry at a time when fuel prices were falling. exported raw materials.
“The opposition in Congress did not allow Dilma to take the measures to get out of the crisis,” the former president stated.
When asked about foreign policy and his defense of governments considered authoritarian or dictatorships, Lula replied: “we need to respect the self-determination of the peoples, each country must take care of its nose.”
“If we win the elections, there will be a flood of friends of Brazil who have disappeared and who are going to visit Brazil again. because he will be friends with everyone. Brazil has no international conflicts, “said Lula, who promised to strengthen the institutions and promote dialogue with her opponents in the National Congress.
Last Tuesday, President Bolsonaro scored 32 points -record- during his participation in the Jornal Nacional.
Lula is first in the polls, 15 points behind Bolsonaro and with chances to win in the first round, according to the latest Datafolha poll, from August.
