Lula: from free to free | Opinion

From Rio de Janeiro. Since being released from Curitiba prison, Lula has never said he was free. He said it was cowardly.

For a month, when a judge of the Supreme Federal Court, Edson Fachin, issued a decision quashing Lula’s sentences, the former president began to be released. He recovered his political rights, but there was still the final decision of the plenary session of the Supreme Federal Court.

It is a plenary session of 11 judges, on whose decision the whole week was devoted to speculating on the vote of each. The only certainty was that Bolsonaro’s new judge would vote against Lula.

The meeting kicked off on Wednesday, with a previous theme, on whether the process should really move to a vote in the STF plenary session or whether it should be voted on by a single Supreme Court group, the one that already had decided in favor of Lula. This vote went against the arguments of Lula’s lawyers, who wanted it to be done in the group. The tension was created during the vote the next day.

The right has put all their efforts into this decision, as it has become clear, in each new poll that comes out, Lula’s favoritism against Bolsonaro – in the last one, the difference in favor of Lula in the second round is 52-34, with 18 points of difference. While in all others the difference is seven points or less.

This means that Bolsonaro still has a much higher voice stream than the other possible alternatives. There is a consciousness on the right that they could only defeat Lula by reimposing the judicialization of politics. The more democratic the elections, the more Lula will be favored to be elected Brazil’s new president in the next elections scheduled for October 2022.

The STF’s decision of eight votes to three confirms the incompetence of the Sergio Moro to judge Lula and move away from any attempt to re-impose the law. There will always be resources or other instances, but no one else believes that Lula will not be a candidate, nor that he can be defeated.

Lula remained cautious, as always, after the absurd decisions of the judiciary against him. He was imprisoned, convicted, prevented from being a candidate. But today, Lula is interested and confident. He called and I was able to give him a hug. As always, happy but worried. He wants those guilty of all the processes without evidence against him, which led to him spending 582 days in prison since he could not run for president in 2018, to be prosecuted, tried and sentenced..

Finally Lula is not only free, but also free.