Historic Political Career and Campaign Launch

Addressing a sea of supporters in São Bernardo do Campo, the industrial city where his political career began nearly half a century ago, the 80-year-old politician reminded voters of the chaos and violence that unfolded during the 2018-22 presidency of his far-right predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, whose son Flávio Bolsonaro will face Lula in October’s presidential election.

Lula recalled how hundreds of thousands of citizens died during a Covid outbreak Jair Bolsonaro was accused of bungling with his anti-science policies. Gun ownership soared as laws were relaxed, allowing criminal groups to expand their arsenals. “They handed out … more than a million weapons,” Lula said, promising to dedicate a fourth term to improving education and healthcare as well as developing Brazil’s rare-earth deposits, the world’s second largest after China’s.

Security and Criminal Justice Plans

Lula also said he would improve security by targeting the rich organised crime bosses who lived in luxury apartments. “It’s easy to kill a crook in a favela. But the guy running the show lives in a penthouse … and we need to stop this,” Lula said. He also told his far-right rivals to “show some shame”.

Those strikes made Lula a household name and in 2002, after three failed attempts, he won a landslide victory to become his country’s first working-class president. Lula was speaking at the Vila Euclides football stadium, where his astonishing rise to the presidency began in 1979 when, as 33-year-old union leader, he drove two historic strikes that helped end the military dictatorship.

Political Legacy and Challenges

During Lula’s first two-terms, from 2002 until 2010, he was credited with fighting hunger, dramatically expanding social welfare programmes and access to higher education, and improving Brazil’s global standing, although his administration was blighted by corruption scandals. His successor, Dilma Rousseff, became Brazil’s first female president but led the country into a severe economic recession before being controversially impeached in 2016.

In 2018, Lula was jailed for alleged corruption and he spent 580 days in prison before the supreme court quashed his conviction. Lula’s imprisonment allowed Bolsonaro to win that year’s election, ushering in four years of environmental destruction and international isolation.

In 2022 Lula won his third term, defeating Bolsonaro by a razor-thin margin and vowing to rescue the country from “one of the worst periods in Brazilian history”. “This nightmare is over,” Lula declared at his January 2023 inauguration. A week later, far-right radicals rampaged through the capital, Brasília, in a botched attempt to bring Bolsonaro back.

Bolsonaro was jailed in 2025 for 27 years for plotting that failed post-election power grab. Flávio Bolsonaro, a 45-year-old senator, launched his campaign on Sunday with an event on Rio’s Copacabana beach, previously the scene of huge rallies in support of his father. “I am going to be Brazil’s next president because I’m going to fight this system,” Bolsonaro, who wore a bullet-proof vest under a yellow Brazil shirt, told a crowd far smaller than those his father used to attract.

Polls suggest Lula holds a slender advantage over Bolsonaro, with 43% of intended votes to his rival’s 40% in a run-off which will take place on 25 October if, as expected, no candidate secures 50% of the vote in the 4 October first round.