How Will Lula Shake Up Brazil’s Political Landscape? @ValeskaZanin, @czmartins, @danrunde, Michael Shifter, Adriana Dantas and I wrote about what the unexpected annulment of Lula’s conviction means for Brazil.
thedialogue.org/analysis/how-w…
thedialogue.org/analysis/how-w…
Fachin’s decision is unlikely to be overturned. Lula is already a de-facto candidate for the 2022 presidential election and probably a competitive one at that. Lula had been leading the polls when his conviction and prison sentence in 2018 turned Bolsonaro into the front-runner.
Since he took office, Bolsonaro has not faced an organized opposition, and no other politician has been able to fill the vacuum Lula left behind, in part because center-right parties such as the PSDB, Democratas &Novo decided not to unequivocally distance themselves from the prez
Bolsonaro, too, has sought to weaken center-right parties as he prefers a more polarized campaign against a left-wing candidate. This dynamic has narrowed the corridor for centrist candidates.
São Paulo state Governor João Doria—long seen as Bolsonaro’s main challenger—has already signaled he may prefer to run for re-election rather than seeking the presidency.
The most likely scenario is thus a runoff between Lula& Bolsonaro. Lula can be expected to adopt a similar strategy to that of Biden in 2020, moving to the center and allowing the pandemic & the economic collapse to take center stage and give Bolsonaro enough rope to hang himself
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