SãO BERNARDO DO CAMPO, Brazil: Brazil’s left-wing leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva returned to his trade union stronghold on Saturday to address throngs of celebrating supporters, a day after walking free from jail.
Lula’s visit to the metalworkers’ union he once led near Sao Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, comes after his arch-nemesis, far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, branded him a “scoundrel”.
Bolsonaro told his Twitter followers on Saturday that Lula was “momentarily free, but guilty”.
Lula’s release came after a highly politically-sensitive Supreme Court ruling on Thursday that could free thousands of convicts.
A 6-5 decision overturned a rule requiring convicted criminals to go to jail after losing their first appeal.
Those convicts would remain free until they had exhausted their rights to appeal -- a process critics say could take years in cases involving people able to afford expensive lawyers.
Lula’s criminal record prevents him from running for political office, at least for now. His freedom is likely to reinvigorate the rudderless left that has floundered since the charismatic 74-year-old was jailed in April 2018 for corruption.
It also threatens to deepen political divisions in the country as Bolsonaro, who was swept to power last year on a wave of anti-left sentiment, goes on the offensive.
The decision also undermines a sprawling corruption investigation called Car Wash that has put dozens of political and business leaders behind bars, including Lula -- a probe supported by many ordinary Brazilians fed up with white-collar crime.
In an impassioned address on Friday to hundreds of supporters who greeted him as he walked out of the federal police headquarters in the southern city of Curitiba, Lula vowed to keep fighting for poor people.
The former union leader who helped found the Workers Party (PT) denounced the economic policies of Bolsonaro.
“People are hungrier, they have no jobs, people work for Uber or delivering pizzas on a bike,” Lula said in remarks sometimes drowned out by cheers from the crowd and fireworks overhead.
Lula, who led Brazil through a historic boom from 2003 to 2010, earning him the gratitude of millions of Brazilians for redistributing wealth to haul them out of poverty, was serving eight years and 10 months for corruption.
He was sentenced to almost 13 years in jail in February in a separate corruption case and still faces another half dozen corruption trials.
