“Candidate Lula or Lula in campaign” | Fernando Hadda …

From Brasilia

In 2018, when Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was prevented from participating in the elections by judicial warfare or the law, supported by the army as the then army chief had just recognized, Fernando Haddad took up the challenge of being the Party candidate among the workers. . It was a simple heroic candidacy: he had to lead a campaign against time while the leader of the PT remained in prison without the right to comment. In those few weeks, Haddad managed to reach the second round, where he secured 47 million votes against the winner, Jair Bolsonaro, who had bankers, media, generals and judges on his side.

In this interview with PageI12, Haddad makes no secret of his intention to face the former captain again in the 2022 election, when he has more time to campaign and has Lula’s support in full freedom, a fact not very sympathetic to the conservative field. Using a carnival expression, the ex-president, who continues to be banned, suggested that Haddad take “the car in the street” (put “o bloco na rua”) as do the neighborhood comparsas.

“With this sentence, which had a great impact, Lula intended not to let time pass, to travel the country with our program so that people can compare it with the disaster of Bolsonaro, the worst president in history. Bolsonaro does not govern, he is on a permanent campaign for 2022, ”explains Haddad. He immediately specifies that “Lula will be the candidate” if his political rights are restored. For this, it is necessary that those of former judge Sergio Moro in the Lava Jato case be canceled.

– Will Lula be rehabilitated?

– Lula is very skeptical about the possibility of recovering his political rights, his skepticism has nothing to do with legal issues, what is at stake are political reasons. He considers it very difficult for those in power to accept the truth and admit the persecution that has taken place against them. From his perspective, Lava Jato’s lie was told in one day and the truth will be told bit by bit. My point of view is somewhat different, I think there is a crack, I am not saying a window, that can allow justice to be done with Lula. Today, I have a little hope, unlike 2018 when I had no expectations about the possibility of being allowed to stand for election.

What scenarios do you imagine?

– That Lula is a candidate or that Lula works in the campaign.

Do you accept to apply?

–Yes of course. There is an expectation in this regard. We will work until the last minute to get Lula back to her rights, but if that doesn’t happen, we have already put our name into consideration (by the PT).

– The media discourse has fueled a persistent anti-fetism. How to reverse it?

– We must reconnect with the population, we have a year and a half of work to find out what is happening to people, we want to discuss the delay in vaccination, the loss of income and jobs, the environmental issue, the international isolation of Bolsonaro. We want to dialogue with the civilized part of the country, which is the majority, which is starting to understand what Bolsonaro means, we have to dismantle Bolsonaro. Antibolsonarism has developed a lot, antibolsonism already exceeds antipetism.

– What is your political priority at the moment?

-The first initiative is to seek that the right, if it is excluded from the waiver in 2022, does not vote for the extreme right. Let us remember that the big problem in 2018 was that the right had voted for Bolsonaro in the second round, thus violating his commitment to democracy. Contradictions between the right and the far right must be exploited An old professor has said that in Brazil liberals are not very democratic and businessmen are not very defenders of the free market.

– When you say good, you mean the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso?

–In 2018, the PSDB appointed Joao Doria as candidate for governor of São Paulo, Antonio Anastasia for governor of Minas Gerais and Eduardo Leite in Rio Grande do Sul. All three voted for Bolsonaro in the second round.

– Is it realistic to bet on an alliance with Joao Doria in 2022?

– I’m correcting him, I’m not talking about an alliance with Joao Doria in 2022, he can vote for his candidate in the first round but in the second he can vote for the PT instead of Bolsonaro, and then he can be opposition to the Government PT. See what is happening now, Bolsonaro every week offends Doria, tells her the worst baseness. I wonder, will Doria have the courage to vote for him?

– Are the laws of Brazil and Argentina comparable?

– Are very different. In Argentina, the judiciary did not obtain a victory against Cristina similar to the one it obtained here against Lula. Here the Lawfare was swift, destructive, the Brazilian case is closer to that of Ecuador, where Rafael Correa could not be a candidate.

A murderer

Polls released since December show a Bolsonaro with waning popularity and the rise of slow vaccination repudiation and health policy against Covid-19. According to specialists, this setback indicates that patience with Bolsonaro is exhausted in the sectors of the middle class who voted for him. But despite this setback, he retains a thirty percent popularity, reflecting that audience that experienced him this summer as he walked without a mask and ranted social isolation on the beaches of San Pablo and Santa Catarina.

– There’s no indication that Bolsonaro is finished.

– Bolsonaro mobilizes these people affects extreme individualism, which cultivates a kind of social Darwinism, it is a sector linked to the growth of Prosperity Theology, of the neopentecostal movement, which combines with extreme neoliberalism, which does not not interested in the pandemic

– When the 246 thousand dead were already exceeded …

– We are breaking records, over the past 31 days the daily average was over a thousand deaths as the government sabotages social isolation and promotes treatment with hydroxychloroquine, a drug that has no no effect on the coronavirus. Bolsonaro manipulates public opinion with chloroquine and encourages whoever wants to be vaccinated and who does not, sowing doubt. The January and February pandemic figures are the result of what Bolsonaro planted for nearly a year. If concrete measures are not taken, it is possible that in 2021 we will have the same number of deaths as in 2020, when the 200 thousand were exceeded.

-Official figures indicate 10.1 million infected, it is suspected that there are more.

– There is no doubt that there is more, this government is absolutely irresponsible in naturalizing the most serious pandemic of the last hundred years.

–Human Rights Watch considers that Brazil has “sabotaged” the vaccine and the International Criminal Court has started to analyze a complaint for “genocide”.

– Bolsonaro first sabotaged social isolation and the vaccine, he ignored all the health recommendations made by specialists, reasons which justified several requests for dismissal. This government is acting in a criminal manner. There is a doctrinal discussion on whether or not Bolsonaro committed genocide. I have my doubts about the genocide, but I am sure he committed homicide, he promoted death.

How many deaths could be avoided?

– If Brazil had adopted the sanitary measures recommended by specialists, there would currently be between 70 and 80,000 deaths. It can be said that anything over 70,000 or 80,000 deaths has occurred under government responsibility. Brazil has about 2.7 percent of the world’s population and about eleven percent of those killed by the pandemic. This means that we are responsible for triple the number of deaths relative to our population, a huge disproportion.

Radicalize integration

Haddad analyzes the Brazilian case from a Latin American perspective, highlighting the contrast of the far-right government against a context in which the progressive administrations of Argentina and Mexico stand out.

– What would be the impact of a PT victory in the region?

The 2022 elections will be important for Brazil and the region. It is vital that Brazil change course, it is evident that there is enough force in Argentina and Mexico to resist Bolsonaro’s claims to extend the far right, but it is not enough to resist Bolsonaro, we have to build something in common.

–Build with more integration?

– I am enthusiastic for the radical integration of Latin America, including Mexico, I do not see a future for the region without a radical integration process. The pandemic is an opportunity to organize our actions. to act together for the well-being of our people. If Brazil had a progressive government in 2022, I believe that with Alberto Fernández, with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with Bolivian President Luis Arce, with the eventual victory of the allied candidate of Rafael Correa in Ecuador, we will be able to promote a program of regional development. A project that could even surpass that carried out at the time by presidents Kirchner, Lula, Chávez, Evo and Correa. What they did was great, but we could go even further by radicalizing integration.