The PT candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT), promised to resume economic growth and remove Brazil from the hunger map. At a rally in Montes Claros, in the north of Minas Gerais, he said that the country has gone back several decades in relation to food insecurity.
“In Minas Gerais there are 2 million people starving, in Brazil there are 33 million”, declared Lula. He spoke at the beginning of the night, accompanied by the former mayor of Belo Horizonte and candidate for the government of Minas Gerais, Alexandre Kalil (PSD), and the candidate for reelection to the Senate by the state, Alexandre Silveira (PSD-MG). According to Lula, hunger has both economic factors and a lack of public management.
Lula promised to work to regain workers’ rights. “The salary mass has dropped a lot. People are without a formal contract, without any social security, weekly rest. Today, Brazil has no respect. It became a kind of global shame.”
Before the rally, Lula gave a press conference and said that Minas Gerais was the state he visited most since the articulations for the creation of the Workers’ Party, in the early 1980s. “The state of Minas Gerais is the state I visited the most. I can even tell you that there are governors of Minas Gerais who have not traveled around the state as much as I have since the 1980s, when I traveled with the union to build the PT”, she declared.
The candidate recognized the importance of the state, the second largest electoral college in the country, for the definition of presidential elections. “There are several important states in the Federation and Minas was placed on my agenda as the preferred state, not only to elect my fellow members who participate, state, federal and senator deputy, but to elect our governor Kalil. And I’m going to ask for a vote for me too,” he said.
After the rally, Lula intends to spend the night in Montes Claros. This Friday morning (16th), he should visit two farms with certification of sustainable practices, in the municipalities of Jequitaí and São João da Ponte, in the north of Minas Gerais. In the afternoon, he travels to Porto Alegre, where he will hold a rally at the end of the day.
