Brazil election: Jailed ex-leader Lula pulls out
Former Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pulled out of next month's presidential
election, allowing his running mate to stand in his place.
Workers' Party leader
Gleisi Hoffman announced the decision outside the police headquarters where the
72-year-old is serving a 12-year sentence.
Brazil's top electoral
court barred Lula's candidacy less than two weeks ago due to his corruption
conviction.
The move comes days
after a far-right candidate was stabbed at a rally.
The 63-year old Jair Bolsonaro must now
undergo major surgery after being attacked by a lone assailant,
doctors said.
What has happened with Lula?
A letter written by
Lula in his prison cell was read out to his supporters who have been camping outside
the jail for five months demanding he be freed.
In it, the former
president, who governed from January 2003 until December 2010, said he would
not run in the election scheduled for 7 October.
He also named Fernando
Haddad as the man to step into the breach.
Why did he finally give up?
The decision comes
after a lengthy legal battle which culminated on 31 August when the Superior
Electoral Court (TSE) ruled that he was "ineligible" to run for the
presidency.
Lula's legal team and
the Workers' Party have appealed against the decision and the Supreme Court is
still due to rule on it.
u of Lula have been
camped outside the police headquarters where he is jailed
Up until Monday night,
the Workers' Party strategy had been to keep Lula's name on the ticket for as
long as possible.
Lula left office with
record approval ratings and despite his imprisonment, almost 40% of people
asked by polling firm Datafolha said they would vote for him.
Mr Haddad, on the
other hand, is a former education minister who has little name recognition
outside of São Paulo, where he served as mayor.
Lula's legal team
asked the Supreme Court to extend the deadline for registering candidates for
the presidency from end of business Tuesday to Monday 17 September to buy
itself more time.
Typical of the high
drama which has characterised the election campaign, Lula and his party decided
to change tack after the Supreme Court rejected their request to extend the
deadline.
Lula's long shadow
Katy Watson, BBC South America
correspondent
In his letter, Lula
says that while a man can be unfairly imprisoned, his ideas cannot be. He's
made it clear he will keep fighting for the party from behind bars.
Lula asked his
supporters to vote for Fernando Haddad but he's a relative unknown, especially
in the north-east of the country, a poor part of Brazil that has traditionally
been a Lula heartland.
There are less than
four weeks left until the first round. The latest poll, released by IBOPE on
Tuesday evening, suggested that the percentage of voters intending to back
far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro had risen to 26%. Mr Haddad isn't doing
badly - his share has risen to 8% while other candidates saw their share remain
stable or fall.
The Workers' Party has
adopted a new slogan - "Haddad is Lula" - there's no clearer signal
that although Lula is out of the race, the country's most popular politician is
still in the minds of millions.
Why was Lula barred?
Lula was barred from
running for the presidency under a 2010 law dubbed "Clean Slate". It
prohibits those who have a criminal conviction which has been upheld on appeal
from running for public office.
In July 2017, Lula was
found guilty of accepting an upgrade to a beachfront flat as a bribe from an
engineering firm involved in a major corruption scheme.
Lula has always denied
any wrongdoing and appealed against the verdict.
ed after being convicted
on corruption and money laundering charges
In January, an appeals
court upheld the conviction and increased the sentence from the original
nine-and-a-half years to 12 years.
Lula and his legal
team tried to argue he should stay out of jail while further appeals were under
way.
But in April, he was
given 24 hours to turn himself in. After a tense, two-day stand-off he
surrendered to police and was taken to the federal police headquarters in the
city of Curitiba, where he has been held since.
Why has he remained so popular?
While he was in
office, from January 2003 to December 2010, Brazil experienced its longest
period of economic growth in three decades, allowing his administration to
spend lavishly on social programmes.
Lula handed himself in to police, he had to wade through a
sea of supporters
Tens of millions of
people were lifted out of poverty thanks to the initiatives taken by his
government and many of them remain loyal supporters.
Many poor Brazilians
could also relate to Lula in a way that they could not relate to other
Brazilian politicians.
A charismatic leader,
he served two consecutive terms as Brazil's president before helping his
protégé, Dilma Rousseff, to be elected.
Who is Fernando Haddad?
He was the minister of
education during Lula's presidency and is thought to enjoy his trust. He was
Lula's vice-presidential running mate until now.
Haddad has not performed
well in the polls so far
From 2013 to 2017, the
55-year-old also served as mayor of São Paulo, Brazil's most populous city and
faced mass demonstrations against bus fare rises.
The Workers' Party
hopes that Mr Haddad will get through to the run-off scheduled for 28 October.
But Mr Haddad is
facing legal problems of his own. Prosecutors allege that during his campaign
for mayor his team received a loan from a construction firm which stood to
benefit from contracts once he was elected. He has denied any wrongdoing
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