Lawyer Ciro Gomes officially proclaimed himself this Wednesday as the candidate of the Democratic Labor Party for the presidency of Brazil to “bury” the political models embodied by President Jair Bolsonaro and former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Ciro’s campaign, which will compete for the Planalto Palace for the fourth timeadopted the slogan “vote for one and get rid of both”, in reference to Lula and Bolsonaro.
In his speech, before thousands of PDT militants, Ciro Gomes set the tone of his campaign and was harsh with the ‘Bolsonarista’ “authoritarianism” and the “corruption” that marked the Lula government between 2002 and 2010.
Bolsonaro, who is seeking re-election, “uses the heavy hand of repression and threatshe creates lies and insinuates an armed intervention against our people” and “is a being that caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Brazilians in the pandemic” of Covid-19, Gomes said.
However, he argued that the rise to power of the extreme right was also “an effect, a consequence” of the 14 years in power of the Workers’ Party (PT), first with Lula and then with Dilma Rousseff.
Lullism carried out the monumental work of giving birth to Bolsonaro,” said the labor leader, who accused the former trade unionist of being “an accomplice of a corrupt school of government that led Brazil to this announced tragedy.”
Bolsonaro and Lula “dispute who is more fascist or more communist,” but “they are part of the same social model, which offers alms to the poorest and banquets to the richest,” Gomes said.
Following Gomes’s proclamation, the PDT must now choose who will complete the ticket as a vice-presidential candidate.
The initial intention, according to the party’s president, Carlos Lupi, is to ally with another force, to reinforce Gomes’s candidacy.
At 64 years old, with more than four decades in politics, Gomes was mayor, governor, minister and deputy, and in 2022 he faces his fourth presidential candidacy, after having aspired to power in 1998, 2002 and 2018.
In his three previous attempts, he obtained an average of 11% of the votes, far from the 45% that the favorite Lula has and the 30% that Bolsonaro holds.
The PDT inaugurated a cycle of conventions that the parties must carry out, according to the Brazilian electoral law, to confirm their candidates and that will continue this Thursday, when the PT, which has Lula as its standard-bearer, does the same.
The Liberal Party (PL), headed by President Bolsonaro, announced its convention for next Sunday in a gym in Rio de Janeiro, his hometown.
Source: Observadora
