The PT candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), promised to eliminate the lines at the National Social Security Institute (INSS) and improve education rates. He is in Porto Alegre, where he participated, this evening, in a rally alongside the party’s candidates for the government of Rio Grande do Sul, Edegar Pretto, and for the Senate, Olívio Dutra.
Before the rally, the candidate held a press conference. During the conversation, Lula said it was possible to end the wait to receive social security benefits. “It is possible to do. If we go back, let’s do it because the digitized world is so much more modern and the people who did it the first time are all alive and very willing to work,” she declared.
The candidate recalled that, when he was president, he accelerated the process of granting benefits by transferring the responsibility for proving the length of service from the worker to the government. He said that the processing time for requests for medical expertise, in his government, dropped from a year to a maximum of five days.
Regarding education, Lula criticized the worsening indicators of the Basic Education Development Index (Ideb) and the Basic Education Assessment System (Saeb), released today. The proportion of students with problems in learning the Portuguese language rose from 15.5% in 2019 to 33.8% in 2021.
“What happened to Ideb today is a national shame”, declared Lula. The index for the early years of elementary school dropped from 5.9 to 5.8 in the same comparison, with the effects of the covid-19 pandemic being most felt in those who are learning to read, write and do math. The candidate promised to appoint a quality Minister of Education to reverse the situation.
On family farming, Lula defended the increase in food production and the resumption of the role of regulatory stock of the National Supply Company (Conab). He said it is possible to improve the coexistence between agribusiness and family farming without increasing deforestation.
“We have a lot of degraded land. We don’t need to remove half a meter from the Amazon for anyone to plant anything, much less the Pantanal. Sugarcane, soy, these things don’t have to enter the biomes that we have to preserve for the good of humanity,” she declared. The candidate defended sustainable development and stated that there will be no mining on indigenous lands nor deforestation in areas of environmental preservation.
Lula is traveling through the Southern Region, where he promotes his own candidacy and that of local allies. Tomorrow, she will be in Curitiba. The next day, she will go to Florianópolis.
