Lula, Nobel Peace Prize nominee | It was distinguished …

From Brasilia

On the eve of the announcement of the Nobel Prize to which he is a candidate, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been awarded by the most powerful North American trade union center, AFL-CIO, whose President Richard Trunca will visit him Thursday at the Directorate of the Federal Police Curitiba.

The leader will present the George Meany Lean-Kirkland Award for Human Rights. "The AFL-CIO recognizes Lula's decades of struggle for the promotion of workers' rights and the strengthening of democracy." For the organization, which brings together four unions, the founder of the Workers' Party (PT) is a victim of "privileged elites" in whose service the judiciary has jailed him "illegally" to prevent him. to participate in the elections of 2018. "Alongside the leader of the AFL-CIO, the visit is expected.The day after tomorrow, Pepe Alvarez, Secretary General of the Union of Spanish Workers (UGT), announced the gate of the Brazilian Unica de los Trabajadores (CUT).

Lula has become the most notorious "political prisoner" in the world, as former US semi-specialist Noam Chomsky has called former French presidential candidate Jean Luc-Melenchon. The French went to Curitiba a month after Alberto Fernández, presidential candidate of the Frente de Todos, a favorite to win the October 27 elections.

In his isolated cell, Lula has developed an intelligent political strategy that allows him to consolidate his national political leadership and his dimension as leader of the Latin American democratic left. "It will rot in prison," President Jair Bolsonaro predicted a few months ago, imagining that his rival was doomed to political isolation. And it was the opposite.

The retired captain did not meet any Head of State during his recent trip to the UN Assembly, where bilateral meetings are commonplace, while the politician's agenda appears to be that of an acting head of state.

In the course of the eighteen months he has locked up, he has been visited or received the solidarity of virtually all of the world's left-wing leaders as well as former heads of state such as France's Françoise Hollande. And gestures of solidarity from Pope Francis who sent him a blessed rosary.

"If I had a doubt of a millimeter about Lula's innocence, I would not visit him," Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón said bluntly last month, as well as his critics on Jair Bolsonaro's "contaminated Lava Jato process" of justice.

"Lula is in jail because in his governments, giant steps have been taken for social justice … and Bolsonaro is a man who does not believe in democracy, freedom or equality," he said. Spanish trade unionist Pepe Alvarez. expected this Thursday in Curitiba.

A week ago, the mayor of Paris declared extornero and twice president "citizen of honor", after the approval of its deliberation Council. Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo justified recognition in the legacy left by petista administrations in which "Thirty million Brazilians have left poverty to access essential rights."

This argument resembles the one invoked by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel when he launched the Brazilian Nobel Peace Prize nomination, which brought together hundreds of thousands of support companies around the world. Esquivel was one of the personalities who went to Curitiba most often, three times. During the last, he spoke to this newspaper about his expectations of the Nobel Prize. Anque was very measured in his response, leaving hope open.

Deliberations in the Nobel Committee are secretive and the "versions" of the awards given to Brazilian politicians are "optimistic". Whatever the outcome, the truth is that Lula "is one of the most publicized, most exposed candidates in the world", and this also contributes to the pressure for her freedom, said the Nobel Prize winner. ;Argentina.