The judiciary reverses the political scenario in Brazil. After paving the way for the election of Jair Bolsonaro three years ago, ruling the former president's ineligibility Squid, at the time sentenced to 12 years and 1 month in prison for corruption in the Lava Jato maxi investigation, Brazil's Mani Pulite, yesterday the Supreme Court canceled all the sentences against the leader of the Workers' Party (who in the meantime, in 2019 , had been sentenced to another 12 years for money laundering and passive corruption, in another branch of the Petrobras trial). So Lula returns to the political scene: he can run again and is already ready to do so, to challenge Bolsonaro in the 2022 presidential elections.
“If people want me, I'm ready to take the field: politics is my whole life”, commented Lula hotly, whose popularity in Brazil, despite the judicial troubles and advancing age (he is 75 years old, was almost two years in prison and finished his last term a decade ago now), is still very high. All the more reason today that his image is back to being "immaculate" or almost: the decision of the Supreme Court in fact cancels all the judicial events in one fell swoop, which have profoundly marked public opinion in the South American country, with strong media tensions and square. The defect was formal: the Court that had judged him was incompetent to do so.
So everything has been reset and now the games are reopening. During the years of Lula's imprisonment, the Brazilian left had struggled to find a new leader capable of stemming the populist wave represented by Bolsonaro, who in fact had triumphed in the 2018 presidential elections and still enjoys moderate popularity, despite the tragicomic management of the health emergency, which in Brazil it caused over 260.000 victims and an economic and social disaster (more than in Europe, since there is no Community aid in South America and therefore there is no equivalent of a Recovery Plan). Lula's dolphin, Dilma Rousseff, had also been involved in legal proceedings, while the former mayor of São Paulo, Fernando Haddad, had soundly lost the presidential challenge in 2018.
Now with Lula's return to the field, everything changes: the former trade union leader, president from 2003 to 2011 and architect - despite the scandals - of the great Brazilian economic miracle, is still the darling of the poorest areas of the country and above all of the ethnic minorities, which has contributed to literacy and in part to bring out of extreme poverty. However, the challenge will not be easy: the country is split in half and it is not said that Bolsonaro cannot aspire to an encore. He is still supported by a large part of the white population, by the ecclesiastical and military circles and by entrepreneurs, especially agricultural ones, whom he continues to reward by facilitating the deforestation of the Amazon and the advance of large estates at a worrying pace.
