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BRAZILIAN President Jair Bolsonaro, candidate for reelection, lashed out against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Wednesday and affirmed in a crowded rally in Curitiba that “the thief will not return to the scene of the crime”.
Bolsonaro thus alluded to the corruption scandals registered during the administration of Lula, who leads the polls for the October 2 elections after spending 580 days in a jail in that city in the south of the country.
“Now there is a thief who wants to return to the scene of the crime, but he will not return. And hopefully when he returns to jail, it won’t be in Curitiba,” Bolsonaro said before hundreds of people who chanted “Lula thief, your place is in prison.”
With his political rights recovered, Lula leads a broad socialist front and has a voting intention of around 45%.
Almost a month before the elections, Bolsonaro re-emphasized his differences with Lula and the conservative values he defends.
“Our government will never support the liberation of drugs, will never support abortion and will never support gender ideology,” because “it is a government in favor of the family and the homeland, that believes in God and owes loyalty to the people,” he declared.
“Every day, when I wake up, I make my prayer and beg God that our people never know the pain of communism”, because “in communism there is no freedom or private property” and Brazil is “a country that wants peace and tranquility”, he added.
He also reiterated that, as a military man and captain of the Army reserve, he swore “to give his life for the homeland” and assured that, if necessary, he would also do it for “freedom”, which is “the most sacred thing that a human being has, even more than life itself”.
He also insisted on qualifying the elections as a “war against evil” and guaranteed that “on October 2, the majority of good will prevail over evil in every corner of Brazil”.
Editor’s note: The quotes featured in this article were originally published in Spanish, then translated to English and edited for publication.
