After enduring lawfare, jail and persecution, Lula da Silva was once again elected president in Brazil. He won this Sunday in the ballot, of the presidential elections, by obtaining 50.90% of the votes.

The Cuban president had expressed satisfaction with the electoral victory of the leader of the Workers’ Party, whom he congratulated on behalf of the Cuban government and people.

Venezuela and Brazil agree to resume binational cooperation agenda
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, and the newly elected Brazilian president agreed to resume the binational cooperation agenda between the two countries.

“I had a good telephone conversation with the president-elect of the Federative Republic of Brazil,” the president said on his Twitter account.

“We agreed to resume the Binational Cooperation Agenda between our countries. We appreciate your willingness!” he stated.

Maduro also revealed that the Brazilian labor leader sent his greetings and commitment to all the people of Venezuela.

“We are willing to work hard to strengthen Latin America and the Caribbean and for the economic and social development of our peoples,” the head of state wrote on the social network.

Lula after speaking with dozens of heads of state: “We are returning to the world”
The Brazilian president said on Tuesday that he has spoken with dozens of heads of state, and “all want to expand alliances and joint work with Brazil on trade, on climate issues and on major global issues.”

“We are returning to the world,” Lula da Silva highlighted on his Twitter account.

(With information from Prensa Latina)

The elected president, the leader of the Workers’ Party, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, obtained 50.90% of the votes (60,345,999), with an advantage of 1.80 points (+ 2,139,645 votes) over his opponent, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro, who until this Sunday was running for re-election, finished with 49.10% of the votes (58,206,354).

The website of the Superior Electoral Court reported an attendance at the polls of 79.41% (124,252,796) of voters and an abstention of 20.59% (32,200,558).

118,552,353 valid votes (95.41%), 3,930,765 invalid votes (3.16%) and 1,769,678 blank votes (1.43%) were counted.

Source: Supreme Electoral Court.

On this day, more than 156 million Brazilians were enabled to go to the polls and elect the candidate of their choice. At 5:00 p.m. (local time) the polling stations closed and the vote count began.

Now in the streets of Brazil it is celebrated. In addition, reactions arrive from different parts of the world. Among them, those of the leaders of Venezuela, Mexico and Bolivia.

Other figures in the region have sent their congratulations through the social network Twitter, such as the vice president of Colombia, Francia Márquez, and former presidents Evo Morales and Rafael Correa, of Bolivia and Ecuador, respectively.

The results give the leftist Lula da Silva 48.13% of the vote compared to 43.46% for the far-right Bolsonaro with 98.67% of the vote. The night was bittersweet for the head of state who went from leading the count from the beginning to seeing how his opponent overtook him at the end.

The results leave Lula below what the polls predicted, while Bolsonaro has managed to add more than expected for his re-election.

The count released by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) allows us to foresee that the leader of the Workers’ Party (PT) will have to face the far-right leader in a second round, scheduled for October 30, to define the Presidency.

In accordance with Brazilian electoral legislation, the two candidates with the most valid votes in the first round, that is, the blanks and the null votes have been discounted, must be measured in a ballot in the event that no candidate obtains more than half of the votes. .

The senator of the center-right Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB), Simone Tebet, gave another surprise by coming in third position (4.21%), after surpassing the center-left and former Lula minister, Ciro Gomes (3.05%). Both will be decisive in the second round and this Sunday they got fewer points than expected, to the benefit of the two main candidates, which shows the extreme polarization that Brazil is experiencing and predicts a very close second round.

“Some turbulent weeks await Brazil before the second round on October 30. No matter who wins the presidency, Bolsonarism will be very much alive in Congress and the Senate. If Lula wins, he is likely to face fierce resistance,” political analyst Oliver Stuenkel wrote on Twitter.

Brazilians also voted to elect the 513 deputies, a third of the senators, the governors, as well as hundreds of state and Federal District deputies.

In the three most populous states, Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio Janeiro, candidates for governor allied with Bolsonaro won. In these last two states, even in the first round.

Lula: “We are going to win the elections. This is just an extension.”
A few minutes after the final result of the vote was known, the candidate of the Workers’ Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, celebrated tonight the victory in the first round of the Brazilian elections and affirmed that he has “the certainty” that it can be imposed in the ballot scheduled for October 30.

Lula spoke after 10 p.m. from his bunker set up in a hotel in the center of the city of São Paulo, where he was accompanied by his wife “Janja”, his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, and former president Dilma Rousseff, and members of his party. .
The candidate to reach the presidency of Brazil for the third time challenged President Jair Bolsonaro to a new debate and highlighted that “all elections were in the second round” throughout history. “We are going to win the elections. This is just an extension,” he noted.

“Excuse me, the journalists, the allied parties, but we are going to have to work harder, we are going to have to convince Brazilian society, and convince the other political forces” ahead of October 30, Lula said.

After the defeat this Sunday in Sao Paulo, the city where he began his political career, the former president said that he hopes to turn the adverse result around. “Sao Paulo will be a confrontation of proposals for society and I am going to make every effort and I am certain that together we are going to win São Paulo and we are going to win Brazil”, he stressed.

Lula also called on his followers to gather on the traditional Avenida Paulista, to celebrate and gain strength for the second stretch of the campaign. “You know that our country is worse, that the economy is worse, that we have to recover that country,” stressed the PJ candidate, who said: “Unfortunately for some, I have thirty more days of campaigning.”

“I like the campaign, I love discussing with Brazilian society and it will be important because for the first time there will be a face-to-face debate with the president of the republic to find out if he is going to continue telling lies or if he is going to tell him the truth to the Brazilian people”, he emphasized when requesting another meeting with Bolsonaro.

In that sense, he pointed out: “It is a second chance because that debate was not worth much, that debate had strange people.”

(With information from the NA news agency)

The former president reached 44% in favor of the total number of respondents, which represents one point below the previous investigation by the institute revealed on August 17.

For his part, Bolsonaro obtained 32%, Ciro Gomes of the Democratic Labor Party (PDT) 8%, Simone Tebet of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) 3%.

Meanwhile, Vera Lucia Pereira Da Silva Salgado of the Unified Socialist Workers Party (PSTU) and Felipe D’Ávila of the Partido Novo reached one percent in the survey where the undecided represented 6%.

Similarly, Quaest revealed that although the possibility of a possible victory for Lula in the first round is not ruled out, the PT leader would win with 51% in a possible second round while Bolsonaro would achieve 37%.

On the other hand, the Ipec research institute carried out a survey in four states and the Federal District where the advantage of the former president in the most populous states of the country is evident.

According to the study, Lula obtained 40% against Bolsonaro’s 31% in São Paulo and 45% in Minas Gerais for an advantage of 15 percentage points.

In Rio de Janeiro, the former president obtained 39% compared to 36% for the current head of state. However, due to the margin of error, the three points are declared a technical draw.

Meanwhile, the PT candidate will visit the capital of the state of Amazonas, Manaus, on Wednesday, where he will meet with 35 entities and social movements as part of his electoral campaign.

(With information from teleSUR)

In his message, the President expressed his appreciation of the organization’s years of struggle and recalled the significance of the 2003 victory at the polls of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leader of the PT.

“Congratulations to the PT on the 41 years since its foundation, years of struggle, in which, with Lula’s victory in 2003, you defended democracy and successful policies of social justice and economic development to make Brazil a better country. Together we defend peace and a better world,” he wrote.

Lula da Silva recently visited Havana to participate in the filming of a documentary directed by U.S. filmmaker Oliver Stone, and met with the first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, with the Cuban President, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister also participating.

On that occasion, Lula thanked our country for continuing the struggle for full freedom and condemned the tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States on Cuba for almost six decades. The party leaders discussed and reaffirmed the historic ties of brotherhood shared by our two peoples and organizations.

(Taken from Granma)

The hearing began September 17, at 10:00 am local time, at Federal Police headquarters in Curitiba, capital of the southern state of Paraná, where the former labor leader has been imprisoned since April 7, 2018.

The CNDH decision, Prensa Latina reports, to hear the founder of the Workers Party’s arguments, was mandated by the 12th Federal Court of Curitiba during the 48th session of this body, held in June, to examine the possibility that Lula’s right to defense was violated.

The body discussed his condemnation of selectivity, discrimination, violations of human rights, and constitutional principles by the Brazilian justice system, during the process that led to his arrest, outlined in the report “The Secret Messages of Lava Jato”, published June 9 on The Intercept website.Judge Carolina Lebbos, in charge Lula’s custody in Curitiba, authorized the visit following “the receipt of a complaint alleging violations of constitutional guarantees and human rights.”Following the ruling by Lebbos, the former President’s defense team emphasized that the hearing would be “an opportunity to deepen the technical debate on allegations of gross human rights violations” that Lula suffered in ​​the Lava Jato operation.

The Brazilian judge, according to RT, rejected a complaint filed by the prosecutor for passive corruption against former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his brother José Ferreira, known as Frei Chico.”You don’t need a keen sense of justice, just a little common sense to see that the accusation is based on interpretations and a lot of assumptions,” said Ali Mazloum, a Sao Paulo federal judge.Lula’s defense explained in a statement that the complaint presents “the same unfounded accusations already presented in other criminal proceedings against the former President,” and added, “Lula never offered the Odebrecht group a package of special advantages.”Since April 2018, Lula has been serving an eight-year and ten-month prison sentence in Curitiba, for money laundering and passive corruption in the case of a triplex apartment in Guarujá, in the state of Sao Paulo.

The former President was also sentenced to another 12-year and 11 months sentence for corruption and money laundering in the remodeling of a house in Atibaia, Sao Paulo, a sentence that was not confirmed by the higher court.CUBA AND THE WORLD STAND BY LULA “Cuba never abandons its true friends, especially when they are subjected to continued injustices,” said the president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), Fernando González Llort, during the final day of the 13th International Workshop on Emancipatory Paradigms, held in January this year, in Havana, which focused on organizing actions to win the liberation of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.Members of left political parties, social movements, and union trade from more than 25 countries were called upon to strengthen the international campaign supporting the former Brazilian president’s release, a constant battle that is making the truth known.Cubans share the deep conviction of Fidel’s thought, expressed in his concept of Revolution, that “there is no force on earth that can crush the power of truth and ideas.” Lula will be free.

(Granma)

Black men with higher education degrees earn on average 29% less than whites, while the difference is 27% in the case of women, according to a study by the Brazilian research institute Locomotiva.

Among the 12.8 million unemployed today in the nation, 64.3% are Black or mixed race, Prensa Latina reported citing PNAD data.

The figures also show inequality in the business world: Blacks occupy only 4.7% of executive positions and 6.5% of management positions, according to a study of the 500 largest companies in Brazil, conducted by the Ethos Institute.

The 2019 Violence Atlas, published by the Institute of Applied Economic Research, in association with the National Public Security Forum, in Brazil, 65,602 intentional violent deaths were recorded in 2017. Of these, as reported by the Forum’s journal, more than 75% of the victims were Black.

The latest statistics released by the UN show that some 23,000 young Blacks die violently every year in Brazil, equivalent to one every 23 minutes.

The study also found that young Black women are more than twice as likely to be victims of homicide as young white women.

These are figures that, according to the UN, reveal “the weight of racism in the current scenario of violence in the country.” In this sense, a Black person is much more likely to be killed compared to other citizens, regardless of age, sex, schooling, or neighborhood of residence

Black youth and adolescents in Brazil are more likely today to commit suicide than whites, PL quotes from a study by the Ministry of Health, published by the G1 news site.

From 2012 to 2016, the suicide mortality rate for the Black population increased by 12%. For every ten suicides within this age group, six were of African descent.

These figures on violence in Brazil may get worse, given the more flexible regulations governing possession of weapons decreed by President Jair Bolsonaro, since more than 70% of the homicides (47,500) were carried out with firearms.

Black youth and adolescents in Brazil are more likely today to commit suicide than whites, PL quotes from a study by the Ministry of Health, published by the G1 news portal.

The national average of homicides is 31.6 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, much higher than a rate of 10 that is considered an “epidemic of violence” by the World Health Organization (WHO), according to ABC International.

Racial discrimination and inequality faced by the Black population, and particularly young Blacks, represent a “situation of structural discrimination, in which the rights of access to higher education, health, work, decent housing, among others, have been severely affected,” the Atlas of Violence states.

The mere presence of young Blacks in certain places frightens some, who immediately seek “help” from the police, limiting access to public recreation sites, a situation that creates great pressure on these young people and adolescents, whose opportunities for socialization are restricted as a result of discrimination and prejudice.

Police interventions in many of cases are violent, as well as unnecessary. The data is especially significant in terms of the young Black population, when it comes to police action, especially in favelas and suburbs, where they are sometimes massacred with impunity, under the pretext of a drug war.

Of the 99.5% of victims recorded as “homicides resulting from police intervention”, 79% were black and 75% young, according to data released by Amnesty International Brazil, showing the seriousness of the matter.

The violence that bleeds Brazil once again sets a historical record, hopefully, as the PT governments attempted, concrete steps will be taken to resolve such a painful situation.

(Granma)

On the occasion of a worldwide day of action calling for the former Brazilian President’s freedom, some 10,000 people from around the country gathered in Curitiba this weekend for a vigil marking the 365th day of the Workers Party leader’s incarceration, demanding his freedom and denouncing the reactionary social and economic measures of the Bolsonaro government.

This Sunday Lula da Silva sent a letter to the Brazilian people saying that his voice is that of millions, and that the setbacks suffered will only strengthen the struggle since we are “alive and strong.”

“They are afraid of the millions of Lulas. Because they know what we are capable of when we come together to transform this country. … Together, we are going to reverse every setback, every step back on the difficult path to the Brazil we dream of, that we will prove is possible to build. We will win,” he said.

(Source: Granma)

“Lula is a victim of political persecution, the proceedings against him have no proof, evidence, nothing,” he stressed. “Interestingly, the person who was behind the incarceration of Lula, once Bolsonaro won the election, was invited to be Minister of Justice. It is already known that the coordination between that judge and the current president came before the election.”

Greenhalgh, a founder of the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT), explained at the meeting that Lula is treated like a criminal, disrespecting his rights, with the sole purpose of preventing his political activity. “Lula remains in a small prison space, which is cruel. I’m 70 years old, I fought against the dictatorship, and I’m disillusioned on seeing him in those conditions.”

Lula is suffering in prison. He has already lost his brother, his grandson, and is being prevented from communicating with the people. He can only talk to his lawyers, and he has restricted access to the media. He has no possibility of permanent religious assistance, and receives his children just once a week, the defense lawyer said.

In his statements, Greenhalgh emphasized that what has happened to Lula is inexplicable. According to the Brazilian justice system, it usually takes about a year and a half for the accused to be imprisoned following the issuing of a sentence. In the case of Lula, just three months later, he was jailed. “What they wanted was to destroy him, to publicly humiliate him.”

The trial against Lula is linked to the United States, its Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where everything was hatched; from there the lawsuits against Dilma and against Lula were prepared. “It’s no wonder President Jair Bolsonaro’s first visit in the United States was to the CIA,” the lawyer denounced.

“For me, as a Brazilian, everything that has happened to Lula is a disgrace, I won’t rest until the day I can leave with him, free,” he stressed.

Only a strong global campaign of solidarity with Lula can result in his release. Greenhalgh commented that when he told the former President of the Cuban government’s decision to build a global campaign for his release, he responded: “I wouldn’t expect anything less of the Cubans.”

Cuban law professors and students, attending the meeting, expressed their unconditional support for the former president, and the confidence that justice will prevail and Lula will be freed.

A quote from Fidel presided the central act to mark the end of the Cuban Medical Brigade’s participation in Brazil’s More Doctors program, held this Thursday in Havana: “No one can sabotage Cuba’s cooperation with other Third World countries. Facts and not just words. Fast action and not waiting indefinitely when there are human beings from poor countries who are dying every day at all hours.”

“You are a symbol of the country that trained you, and offer examples of the types of men and women we aspire to in Cuban society, based on justice and humanism, not on survival of the fittest,” stated the President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, at the act to honor doctors who returned to Cuba after fulfilling their mission in Brazil.

“The return to the Homeland is not the end, it is a beginning. You arrive at an important moment for Cuba, when we are about to approve the new Constitution that will be submitted to a referendum on February 24,” the President stressed.

“You who return to your work centers or leave to fulfill other missions are part of this people that offers us acts of heroism. On behalf of the Party and the government, I would like to reiterate that we are deeply proud of each one of you, as we are of the rest of the health collaborators carrying out missions in 66 other countries,” he added.

The ceremony was held in Havana’s Central Medical Cooperation Unit. Also present were: José Ramón Machado Ventura, Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee; members of the Party Political Bureau: Roberto Morales Ojeda, vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers; and Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs; as well as Minister of Public Health José Ángel Portal Miranda.

Medical collaborator Indira García Arredondo, who returned to the island after providing her services in the state of Sao Paulo, noted on behalf of her colleagues: “The fierce campaign that we all experience, the permanent invitation to bow down, the carrot promised by false prophets of freedom and democracy, which they themselves have trampled over a thousand times. But they were wrong… Our work culminated with results that even our enemies have not been able to conceal. We transformed health indicators and improved the quality of life of millions of Brazilians.”

The ceremony recognized the organizations that supported Cuba’s participation in the More Doctors for Brazil program, and the return of Cuban doctors to the country in just 20 days: the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Investment, Transportation, Public Health; the Central Bank of Cuba, the General Customs Office of the Republic, and the mass media.

(Granma)