63income of poorer families, while other
policies expanded access to education
and health care. “If I can tell you that I
have a daughter with a law degree, it’s
because of programs created by the Lula
government,” says Mel Nogueira, 39, at
the São Paulo rally. “He represents hope
itself.” In 2009, two years before Lula
left office with an 83% approval rating,
President Barack Obama called him
“the most popular politician on earth.”
Then it all came crashing down. In
2014, Brazilian investigators uncovered
a vast kickbacks-for- contracts scheme,
centered on the state oil giant Petrobras,
with billions in public funds pilfered.
The probe was dubbed Car Wash. Lula
was no longer in office, but opposition
parties in Congress took advantage of
anger at the scandal, and an economic
crisis in Brazil, to impeach his PT pro-
tégé President Dilma Rousseff. She was
not directly implicated in Car Wash, but
lawmakers voted her out on the pretext
that she had fudged numbers to make
public accounts look better ahead of an
election, and replaced her with a right-
wing interim President. Two weeks
later, prosecutors alleged that Lula was
the graft scheme’s “mastermind.” The
formal charge was that he had received
a beachfront apartment as a bribe from a
construction company. Lula denied that
he had ever owned the property, but in
2017 federal judge Sergio Moro sen-
tenced him to nearly 10 years in prison.
From behind bars the following year,Lula mounted a new campaign for Octo-
ber’s presidential race. He was ahead in
the polls when Brazil’s top electoral court
ruled that he could not be a candidate.
Lula detected the logic of that: “It made
no sense to impeach Dilma, if two years
later, I would be President again. So they
had to take me out of the game.” Bolso-
naro defeated Lula’s PT replacement by
55.2% to 44.8%. Moro would serve as Jus-
tice Minister in Bolsonaro’s government.
For the Brazilian left, Rousseff ’s im-
peachment amounted to a coup, an at-
tack not on corruption—Car Wash im-
plicated politicians across the political
spectrum—but on the social progress
that Lula and Rousseff had tried to
achieve. Yet some supporters remained
unsure about what had taken place
under Lula’s watch. “I wish the inves-
tigation had convinced me whether he
was guilty or innocent,” left-wing film-
maker Petra Costa said in her 2019 doc-
umentary The Edge of Democracy. “But
instead, I was seeing prosecutors mak-
ing a spectacle to present their case.”
Lula had spent 18 months in prison
when the Supreme Court ruled, in No-
vember 2019, that defendants can’t be
jailed before exhausting their appeal op-
tions. (In April 2022, the U.N.’s human-
rights committee said Lula’s trial had
been biased and violated due process.)
It was a dark period in his life. Publica-
tions that had once celebrated his ac-
complishments were describing him
as a criminal. His second wife, of 43years, Marisa Letícia, had died from a
stroke during his prosecution, and while
he was in jail his 7-year-old grandson
Arthur died of meningitis.
Lula deflects questions about his state
of mind during that time. He says he drew
strength from calls of “Good morning,
President” from supporters who main-
tained a vigil outside the jail. “I was pre-
pared to leave prison without feeling any
resentment, only remembering that it
was a part of history. I cannot forget it,” he
says. “But I can’t put it on the table every
day. I want to think about the future.”FOR ALL HIS TALK of the future, Lula’s
campaign has so far run on nostalgia.
When he was President, his Face book
ads point out, unemployment was lower,
wages were higher, and fuel was cheap.
“Lula hasn’t really presented a plan for
the future. For the time being, he is only
presenting the idea that he was a better
President than Bolsonaro,” says Thomas
Traumann, a political consultant and for-
mer Brazilian communications secretary.
Bolsonaro’s pandemic mismanage-
ment and attacks on democratic insti-
tutions have allowed Lula to command a
broad unity coalition. Geraldo Alckmin,
a center- right former São Paulo gover-
nor who was Lula’s rival in the 2006
election, will be his running mate. Other
former critics are backing his campaign,
including Felipe Neto, a popular You-
Tuber who was a fierce voice against
the PT during the Car Wash probe. “I’m◁
A Lula
triptych,
from left:
during
his 1989
presidential
campaign;
on the day
of his arrest
in April
2018; after
his release
from jail in
November
2019FROM LEFT: ANTONIO RIBEIRO—GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY IMAGES; MARCELO CHELLO—AP/SHUTTERSTOCK; NELSON ALMEIDA—AFP/GETTY IMAGES