MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lula calls Bolsonaro the court's jester

The former leftwing President insisted the judiciary was not against corruption but just “against Lula.” Photo: AFP

Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva Thursday admitted in a TV interview that there were cases of corruption during his consecutive terms as President of Brazil (2003-2010).

The former head of state who continues to lead all polls to return to the Planalto Palace in the October elections also defended his alliance with Geraldo Alckmin, who once was his opposing candidate. Lula also described the incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro as the court's jester.

”One cannot say there was no corruption if people confessed. The problem is that these people got rich for confessing, they (the repentants) won their freedom for saying what the Public Ministry [Prosecution] wanted, something that I consider crazy and an aberration for the country,“ said Lula during an interview with Jornal Nacional of TV Globo, arguably the most important TV station nationwide.

Lula criticized the ”pre-money accusation“ used by the prosecutors of the anti-corruption case Lava Jato, led by former judge Sergio Moro, a process that dismantled a bribery and rigged contracts scheme in the state-owned oil company Petrobras, which also led to Lula's conviction, for which he spent 580 days in jail between 2018 and 2019.

”What happens is that here in Brazil people are convicted by the headlines of the newspapers,“ Lula stressed while insisting Lava Jato ”took a delicate political path, it passed the limits of the investigation and entered the limits of politics. And the objective was Lula, the objective was to condemn Lula,” he insisted in a discourse echoing Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is also under investigation for corruption during her back-to-back presidencies (2007-2015).

Moro was not acting as a judge, but following a political script, Lula argued. The cases against him were dropped by the Federal Supreme Court (STF) after concluding the magistrate had acted in a biased manner.

Lula also vowed that if he is reelected “anyone who commits a crime will be convicted.”

According to Datafolha's latest survey, Lula has a 47% voting intention against Bolsonaro's 32%, while the other contenders have no chance of making it to the runoff.

“Bolsonaro is a hostage of the National Congress, Bolsonaro does not even take care of the budget, the one who takes care of the budget is [House Speaker Arthur] Lira, this never happened, Bolsonaro looks like the court's jester, that is a mockery, that is not democracy,” Lula explained after assuring he posed no threat to against agribusiness entrepreneurs, most of whom support the current head of state.

He also explained former São Paulo Governor Alckmin handled his coalition's talks with businessmen and bankers. Asked about possible resentments with his 2006 rival, Lula answered “you have to see what an expert guy Alckmin is.”