Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

He was President of Brazil in 2003–2010 and again since 2023. He launched his bid for re-election on 2 August 2026, and is the Workers' Party candidate for President of Brazil in the 2026 election.

Career

Lula led the ABC metalworkers' union from 1969 to 1981 and has belonged to the Workers' Party since its 1980 founding, serving as its national president in 1980–1988 and 1990–1994. He was a federal deputy in 1987–1991. He was elected President of Brazil and served two terms, 2003–2010, then won again and took office for a third term in 2023. His social programmes, notably Bolsa Família, marked his presidency.

Positions

Wikipedia places Lula on the left and calls him a pragmatic negotiator rather than a strict ideologue. He backed social programmes and environmental protection, and kept working relations with governments of differing outlooks, among them those of Hugo Chávez and George W. Bush.

Controversies

A federal court in Curitiba convicted Lula in 2017 in a Car Wash corruption case over properties allegedly received from construction firms, and he was convicted again in 2019; he was imprisoned from 2018 to 2019. On 8 March 2021 Supreme Court justice Edson Fachin annulled the convictions, finding they were tried in the wrong court, and the full court upheld that on 15 April 2021 by 8 votes to 3. Reporting notes the ruling was procedural and did not find him innocent. Wikipedia also records the Mensalão vote-buying scandal of his first term.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · OCCRP

Photo: Palácio do Planalto from Brasilia, Brasil, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons (cropped)