Paris city hall made Brazil’s former leader Lula da Silva an honorary citizen on Monday, in a likely blow to his political enemy President Jair Bolsonaro whose relationship with France has deteriorated. The motion to honour Lula was backed by the city’s Socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Former Brazilian President Lula da Silva met on Thursday with Pope Francis at the Vatican, received a papal blessing and said the two discussed prospects for a “more just and fraternal world.”
Pope Francis will receive former Brazilian president Lula de Silva next February 13, according to reports advanced by the country's media and later confirmed by Lula in his twitter account.
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro on Tuesday dismissed an Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary about the 2016 impeachment of leftist ex-leader Dilma Rousseff as “rubbish.”
Brazilian Justice Minister Sergio Moro was chosen as one of the fifty personalities of the decade by the Financial Times, a list which includes activists, politicians, business people and sports persons from all over the world.
If elections were held today in Brazil, president Jair Bolsonaro would be the clearly re-elected with the exception of two scenarios, if facing ex-president Lula da Silva, and current Justice minister Sergio Moro, according to a public opinion poll contracted by the magazine Veja.
Two of Brazil’s former presidents, a chief justice and heads of both chambers of Congress repudiated the country’s economy minister for saying the government might take draconian steps if leftist opponents stirred up protests such as those in Chile.
The presidents of Brazil’s two houses of congress live side by side in modern mansions in Brasília, the capital. In May they built a door in the wall that divides their gardens, so they could meet without attracting notice. The political mood was fevered.
Brazil's icon Lula da Silva walked free from jail on Friday after a year and a half behind bars for corruption following a court ruling that could release thousands of convicts. The former president, wearing a black T-shirt and suit jacket, pumped his fist in the air as he exited the federal police headquarters in the southern city of Curitiba and was quickly mobbed by hundreds of supporters and journalists.
Brazil's Supreme Court decided on Thursday to end the mandatory imprisonment of convicted criminals after they lose their first appeal, restoring the previous rule that they should be allowed to exhaust all their appeal options before being locked up.