Brazil’s radical socialist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva confirmed on Thursday that he will run for a fourth presidential term in next year’s elections.
Lula, presently on an official visit to Indonesia as part of a broader Southeast Asian tour, made the announcement next to President Prabowo Subianto at the Indonesian Presidential Palace in Jakarta.
The Brazilian president, who will turn 80 next Monday, proclaimed that he is ready to run for a fourth term because he has the “same energy” that he had when he was 30. Lula asserted to Prawobo that he is preparing for the upcoming 2026 elections and to try to make the relationship between Indonesia and Brazil more valuable.
“I’m turning 80, but you can be sure that I have the same energy I had when I was 30. And I’m going to run for a fourth term in Brazil,” Lula said. “My term ends at the end of 2026, but we are prepared to compete in other elections.”
Lula, a hardline socialist and founder of the ruling Workers’ Party (PT), unsuccessfully ran for president several times since 1989 and was first elected president in 2002. He was reelected for a second term in 2006 that ran through January 2011, succeeded by his protegé, socialist former President Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached and removed from office in 2016 amid corruption allegations. Rousseff presently serves as the head of the New Development Bank, an institution founded by the BRICS anti-U.S. bloc intended to compete with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Lula intended to run for a third term in 2018, but was imprisoned and sentenced to over two decades in prison on corruption charges as part of a broader anti-corruption probe known as “Operation Car Wash.” The 2018 presidential election ended with the victory of conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro.
Brazil’s top court, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), overturned Lula’s conviction in 2021 on dubious procedural grounds and allowed him to run for president again in 2022. Lula narrowly defeated a then-incumbent Bolsonaro in the October 2022 runoff election. His current third term started on January 1, 2023, and will conclude on December 31, 2026. Brazil’s constitution states that a president serves a four-year term with the possibility of an immediate reelection. A president who has served for two consecutive terms must wait after at least one term has elapsed before being able to run again.
The STF sentenced Bolsonaro to 27 years and 3 months in September for allegedly conspiring with others to stage a “coup” and overturn the results of the 2022 election. According to the STF, the January 8, 2023, riots in Brasília were part of the “coup” plot even though Bolsonaro was not physically present in Brazil at the time of the riots. At press time, Bolsonaro, recently diagnosed with skin cancer, remains under a strict house arrest at his residence in the Brazilian capital awaiting for the STF to determine in which prison he will serve his sentence at.
Prior to his sentence, Bolsonaro was banned from running for office until 2030 in 2023. Despite the ban and sentence, local polls released this month suggest that Bolsonaro remains technically tied with Lula within the margin of error in a hypothetical 2026 race scenario according to polling firm Paraná Pesquisas.
In July, President Donald Trump signed an executive order identifying Brazil as a national security threat, imposing a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian goods entering the United States.
President Trump cited the political persecution of Jair Bolsonaro as one of the reasons for the tariff. STF Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has been at the forefront of the censorship and persecution of Bolsonaro and other Brazilian conservatives, was imposed with human right sanctions under the Global Magnitsky Act.
Lula initially responded to the tariff with a belligerent stance, repeatedly refusing to negotiate with Trump, accusing the U.S. President of being a “liar,” and even fantasizing about imprisoning Trump.
Trump and Lula held a telephone conversation in early October after both heads of state briefly exchanged words on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September. Trump described the call as “very good” and enjoyable.
The Brazilian state-run outlet Agencia Brasil, citing unnamed Foreign Ministry sources, reported that Lula’s agenda remains open to possible bilateral meetings — including the possibility of a yet-to-be confirmed meeting with President Trump, who is expected to travel to Malaysia this weekend.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
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