Brazil’s Lula launches historic fourth term bid – but son of jailed Bolsonaro stands in his way

Brazil’s Lula Launches Historic Fourth-Term Bid

Wanderstayfinder.com – When Brazil’s Lula launches historic political campaigns, the spectacle draws tens of thousands to the streets. On Sunday, the 80-year-old leftwing president addressed a packed crowd at the Vila Euclides football stadium in São Bernardo do Campo — the industrial city where, as a 33-year-old union leader in 1979, he led two landmark strikes that helped dismantle Brazil’s military dictatorship. Lula vowed that for as long as he drew breath, he would block the “shameless” right from reclaiming power, pointing directly at Flávio Bolsonaro, the 45-year-old senator who will face him in October’s presidential vote.

Campaign Pledges and Electoral Stakes

At the rally, Lula catalogued what he described as the devastation of the 2018–22 Bolsonaro presidency: hundreds of thousands of deaths during a pandemic his predecessor mishandled with anti-science policies, and a surge in gun ownership that let criminal networks amass arsenals. “They handed out more than a million weapons,” he told the crowd. A fourth term, he promised, would be devoted to expanding education and healthcare, unlocking Brazil’s rare-earth mineral deposits — the world’s second-largest reserves after China’s — and cracking down on the wealthy organised-crime bosses who operate from luxury penthouses.

“It’s easy to kill a crook in a favela. But the guy running the show lives in a penthouse … and we need to stop this,” Lula declared, urging his far-right rivals to “show some shame.”

The stadium where Lula spoke is the same ground where his political ascent began. Those 1979 strikes made him a household name; after three earlier defeats he won a landslide in 2002 to become Brazil’s first working-class president. His first two terms (2002–2010) are credited with slashing hunger, scaling up social-welfare programmes, broadening university access, and elevating Brazil’s global profile — though corruption scandals shadowed the administration. Successor Dilma Rousseff, the country’s first female president, steered Brazil into a deep recession before her controversial 2016 impeachment. In 2018, Lula was jailed on corruption charges and spent 580 days behind bars until the supreme court overturned his conviction; his absence handed Bolsonaro the presidency and four years of environmental rollback and diplomatic isolation. Lula clawed back the office in 2022 by a razor-thin margin, declaring at his January 2023 inauguration that “this nightmare is over.” A week later, far-right militants stormed Brasília in a botched bid to reverse the result.

The Bolsonaro Challenge and International Context

Bolsonaro himself was sentenced in 2025 to 27 years for plotting that failed post-election coup. His son Flávio launched his own campaign on Sunday with a rally on Rio’s Copacabana beach — a venue once packed for Jair Bolsonaro’s rallies. Wearing a bullet-proof vest beneath a yellow Brazil shirt, Flávio told a noticeably smaller crowd: “I am going to be Brazil’s next president because I’m going to want to fight this system.” Polls currently place Lula at 43 per cent of intended votes against Flávio’s 40 per cent, with a run-off set for 25 October should no candidate clear the 50 per cent threshold in the 4 October first round.

André Pagliarini, author of A People’s President and the Fight for Brazil’s Future, called the contest “the single most important electoral contest this year in the world,” warning that a Bolsonaro-family victory would embolden the pro-Trump “reactionary block” now governing from Argentina to Chile to Colombia, where far-right lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella recently took office. The stakes are sharpened by Washington’s assertive posture: Donald Trump’s administration has carried out lethal strikes against alleged “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean and Pacific, threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal, abducted Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January, and last week released a State Department video declaring that “American dominance in the western hemisphere will never be questioned again.” Trump has also designated Brazil’s two largest organised-crime groups — the Red Command and the PCC — as terrorist organisations, fuelling fears of military intervention or electoral interference on Brazilian soil.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is Brazil’s presidential election? The first round takes place on 4 October 2026. If no candidate wins an outright majority, a run-off follows on 25 October.

Who are the main candidates? Incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (left) and senator Flávio Bolsonaro (far-right), son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence.

What is Lula’s central campaign message? He frames the vote as a choice between continuing his social-welfare and development agenda and preventing a return of what he calls the “shameless” right, citing pandemic deaths, gun proliferation, and organised-crime impunity under the Bolsonaro years.

How does the international situation affect the race? US designations of Brazilian crime groups as terrorist organisations, combined with Washington’s hemispheric dominance rhetoric, have raised concerns among Brazilian voters about foreign interference, giving Lula’s sovereignty-focused messaging added resonance.