Lula

He was President of Brazil from 2003 to 2011 and again from 2023. He is the Workers' Party's candidate for President of Brazil in the 2026 election, seeking re-election.

Career

Born on 27 October 1945, Lula began as a metalworker and led the ABC Metalworkers' Union from 1975 to 1981, leading major strikes in 1978 to 1980 under the military dictatorship. A member of the Workers' Party since 1980, he served as its national president in 1980 to 1988 and 1990 to 1994 and sat in the Chamber of Deputies from 1987 to 1991. He was President of Brazil in 2003 to 2011 and has held the office again since 2023. He launched his re-election bid on 2 August 2026; according to Wikipedia he took 45% in the first round on 4 October against 47% for Flávio Bolsonaro, and the runoff is on 25 October.

Positions

Wikipedia describes the Workers' Party as centre-left and practising social democracy, with social liberalism, progressivism and Lulism among its listed ideologies, and notes that it keeps democratic-socialist factions. It dates the party's move to the centre-left to the 1990s and the 2002 Letter to the Brazilian People, which committed it to tax and pension reform and economic growth.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia · Wikipedia

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