The Supreme Court annuls Lula's convictions for Lava Jato and he will be eligible to run for president in 2022
The Workers' Party is celebrating after the annulment of Lula da Silva's convictions in the context of the Lava Jato operation by Federal Supreme Court (TSF) judge Edson Fachin. A decision made possible by the fact that the Brazilian judicial system allows for one-man decisions by Supreme Court judges.
The former Brazilian president (2003-2011) thus regains his political rights, which opens the door to his return to the Planalto Palace in the presidential elections of October 2022.
Fachin alleges that the court that tried Lula, the 13th Federal Jurisdiction of Curitiba, was not competent to do so. That court was headed by the controversial judge Sergio Moro, who for a time earned a reputation among some sectors of the population as the scourge of corruption, and who after preventing Lula from running in 2018, when he was far and away the favourite in the polls, was appointed justice minister by Bolsonaro once he became president. In April 2020 he resigned from the post over disagreements with the Brazilian president, and in October the Supreme Court accused him of impartiality in the trial that sentenced Lula to 9 years and 6 months in prison for corruption and money laundering. However, Fachin's ruling declined to enter into assessments of Moro's partiality or impartiality.
Already in 2017, 122 jurists from different positions on the political spectrum analysed the 600-page sentence against Lula and determined that it was "fragile, based on exceptionality and lack of evidence".
Fachin's decision came after accepting the habeas corpus filed on 3 November by Lula da Silva's defence. According to his decision, the allegations relating to the flat in Guarujá, the headquarters and donations of the Lula Institute, and the estate in Atibaia, are issues unrelated to the diversion of money from the Petrobras case, which was the subject to which the Curitiba court should have limited itself, and that therefore the competent court was that of the Federal District, to which it has referred them.
The Public Prosecutor's Office has been quick to announce that it will appeal Fachin's decision, and Lula's defence team is not entirely happy that he has not been acquitted of the charges against him in the four corruption cases mentioned above.
"Today's (Monday) decision affirms the lack of jurisdiction of the Federal Court of Curitiba and the recognition that we have always been right in this long legal battle," said the former president's defence in a statement shared by Lula da Silva himself on his Twitter account.
Workers' Party president and close Lula ally Gleisi Hoffman was cautious on Twitter: "We are awaiting the legal analysis of Judge Fachin's decision, which recognises five years late that Sergio Moro could never have tried Lula".
In a speech to the Chamber of Deputies, Hoffman claimed that "Fachin's decision cannot rule out punishment for Moro, a judge who must be tried and convicted". "Everyone has seen the conspiracy to illegally convict the former president", he added.
Elsewhere on the left, Maranhão governor Flávio Dino of the Communist Party of Brazil (PCdoB), one of the parties closest to the PT, shared on Twitter an interview he was given in 2017 in which he pointed out precisely what the Supreme Court judge now acknowledges. The PSOL (Socialism and Freedom Party), a split from the PT, has called it a "democratic victory".
The several times candidate of the centre-left Democratic Labour Party (PDT) and former minister of Lula, Ciro Gomes, despite his estrangement from the former president last night acknowledged in an interview with CNN that "Lula has been persecuted by the arbitrariness of Sergio Moro". Gomes and Lula have tried to rebuild bridges and even met in Sao Paulo in September. At the time, some media spoke of a possible "Cristina Kirchner solution", in reference to the decision taken by the former Argentinean president in 2019 to leave Alberto Fernández in charge of the presidential candidacy and to run herself as a vice-presidential candidate. However, last night she called for "an end to the political radicalism, sectarianism and hatred that have characterised the confrontation between Lulopetismo and Bolsonarismo", a message that in principle does not go along the lines of joining forces with the PT but rather of presenting herself as an intermediate option between Lula's party and Bolsonaro.
In any case, the fact that Lula has recovered his political rights is an unexpected development in the face of the next presidential elections, which are one year and seven months away. At a time when there was already speculation about possible candidates who could unite the left, even outside the hegemonic PT, Lula is once again at the centre of the race, despite the fact that he himself ruled himself out of the running in May last year. "I will be 77 years old, and I will help the PT to have another candidate and I will be a good electoral 'hook'," he said then. But now the scenario has changed.
For the moment the left-wing leader and trade unionist is keeping silent. Meanwhile, he has received an avalanche of congratulations from left-wing leaders in other countries, including former Colombian President Ernesto Samper, Spanish Vice-President Pablo Iglesias, former Bolivian President Evo Morales, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, former Uruguayan President Pepe Mujica and Argentine President Alberto Fernández, among others.
The news was not welcomed by Bolsonaro, who assured that "Brazil does not want to have a candidate like Lula in 2022 because his management was catastrophic" and accused Judge Fachin of having a "strong relationship" with the PT. However, the data does not support the Brazilian president's words, and polls show Lula, who left the presidency with a record popularity of 87%, as the only candidate capable of standing up to him.