With the election six months away, Brazil awoke Thursday morning to an open presidential race. The overwhelming frontrunner, corrupt socialist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, would now begin his 12-year prison sentence for money laundering and accepting bribes.
Many of Brazil’s youth are turning towards conservatism amid multiple corruption scandals and economic decline under leftist rule.
Thousands of Brazilians took to the streets of the nation’s largest cities on Tuesday and Wednesday in anticipation of a Supreme Court decision that opened the door for the arrest of socialist presidential frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva late Thursday morning.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) ruled early Thursday morning against a habeas corpus petition that would have kept socialist former president and presidential frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva from beginning to serve a 12-year prison sentence for corruption.
Brazilian newspapers reported Monday that Facebook had shut down two fan pages for conservative presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro over the weekend, leaving over 900,000 social media users in the dark about the fate of their groups.
A Brazilian election poll found that 24 percent of respondents are not aware that an appellate court sentenced former president and current presidential frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to 12 years in prison on corruption charges.
Brazilian firm Datafolha found in a poll released Thursday that former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva remains the frontrunner in the 2018 presidential election, despite the fact that over half of Brazilians believe he should be barred from running over his 12-year prison sentence on corruption charges.
Brazil’s president, Michel Temer, argued in an interview this week that he believes it would be “best for the country” if former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ran in the 2018 presidential election and lost.
A majority of the three judges presiding over his case in Brazil’s appellate court have not only upheld a ten-year prison sentence for former president and current presidential frontrunner Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, they have demanded that sentenced by extended to twelve years.
Fernando Collor de Mello, the first president of Brazil to be impeached, announced this weekend that he will run for that office again in this year’s presidential election. He currently serves as a senator representing Alagoas.
From the reports coming out of the country, it can be easy to dismiss the Brazilian people as having reached a point of such disappointment with their government that no politician will be able to win them over for a generation.
