Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Wednesday thanked the “solidarity” of Argentine President Alberto Fernández, Pope Francis and other world leaders on his first action since the prison sentences against him were overturned.
In his first statement in his new legal situation, Lula also cited a long list of “thanks” to the former president of the Spanish government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the former Bolivian president Evo Morales and the Sao Paulo Forum, that parties of the Latin American left.
From them, he said he had received “constant evidence of solidarity,” especially during the 580 days he spent in prison for sentences overturned last Monday by a Supreme Court judge who found that the court holding the Lula did not condemn any legal authority to judge him.
His first mention was for the Argentinian president, who he said in 2019 had “the decency and courage to run for president of his country against the far right” to visit him in the cell he occupied with the police. Federal headquarters in Curitiba.
“I asked him not to give interviews so as not to be harmed by the right wing, but he told me Lula, I have no problem with what they are going to say because I know you are the victim of the biggest lie seen in the Latin American politics, ”he said.
He also revealed that Fernández was “the first” to call him on Monday, after Supreme Court Judge Edson Fachin overturned all prison sentences against him and decided that the trials would be rerun, but in the courts of Brasilia.
Regarding Pope Francis, Lula recalled that while in prison he ‘sent someone’ to visit him with a letter and then received him in the Vatican as soon as he regained his freedom due to a change in jurisprudence in the prison rules of a convict.
“The fact that the Pope received me in the Vatican was not for a long conversation about my cause, but about the fight against inequality, the greatest evil that exists on planet Earth today,” said Lula.
The annulment of the sentences, which totaled nearly 26 years, has also returned the former president of his political rights and opens the possibility that he will run for president again in 2022, when the current president, far-right Jair Bolsonaro, is intends to renew its mandate.