Your cause and effect are inverted. It's precisely because of Lula's corruption that nobody cares anymore.
He was arrested for the biggest corruption scandal this country ever had. People ratted him out. He was the guy at the top.
Then the supreme court cited some technicality like "his initial judgement took place in the wrong court" and just undid the entire thing. They did it because nobody else could take out Bolsonaro.
Then he ran against Bolsonaro and took him out in 2022. And he just did it again.
It's Brazil. Crime pays. Lula's existence is proof. This country will never truly change.
So... people react by voting on one of the leaders of the fucking Rio mob? (the "nice family you have, it would be a shame if something happened to them" kind of mob?)
Besides, Jair Bolsonaro won when Lula was still in jail.
The "mob" accusations are just that: accusations. Lula was actually held guilty by multiple independent judges based on evidence and testimony.
And you're right, Lula's imprisonment changed everything. It was a moment of hope for many of us, and the reason why Bolsonaro even had a chance to begin with. Surely you can understand why the supreme court breaking the guy out of jail and putting him in the presidential race again while censoring everything Bolsonaro said and did would cause people to stop believing in justice?
> multiple independent judges
The first instance judge colluded with the prosecution, and when the supreme court was about to rule on a habeas corpus, a general tweeted a thinly veiled threat of military coup if the sentence wasn't confirmed. And the evidence was scant to begin with. Hardly surprising that the conviction was eventually overturned.
Bolsonaro's condemnation, on the other hand, was backed by much more comprehensive evidence, and resulted from a heavily scrutinized process.
If the process was so faulty, why was Lula's condemnation annulled based on the flimsiest of excuses?
Everything got thrown out because of a "tried in the wrong court" technicality. I'd still be disappointed but I'd have been far more sympathetic if what you posted had been cited as the reason for the maneuver.
By "the flimsiest of excuses" do you mean the extensive evidence that one of the most fundamental principles of the justice system, the impartiality of the judge, was completely violated? Because I'd call that a mischaracterization, and that's cos' I'm feeling generous.
Like, I'm not happy that the whole process was thrown out either, because a lot of actually corrupt people got away with it. But another fundamental principle of the justice system is that it NEEDS to err on the side of innocence. So, while it is an unfortunate outcome, I still think that 1) it's better than the alternative, and 2) the blame lays 100% with the partial (and, arguably, corrupt) judge and prosecutor. It was their unscrupulous drive to get 1 guy convicted (with, again, arguably second intentions, since both judge and prosecutor got elect and made a bunch of money with talks and shit) that turned the whole case into trash.
UPDATE: I jumped the gun a bit in the answer, and ended up no addressing the main point: Lula's conviction was not overturned just because it was tried in a 1st instance court, the evidence of partiality of the judge was very much also a factor.
And how many of those 'independent' judges were appointed by Bolsanaro after openly and explicitly promising to 'end' Lula?
Bolsonaro hadn't even been elected at the time Lula was imprisoned.
One.
From 2 courts with 5 judges each.
Matheus in this forum you're literally the only person who believes this and who feels that this is worse than Bolsonaro having literally planned a coup.
What's your point?
The point is, you really need to sit down, examine your life and get help. You have spent years repeating and amplifying debunked Brazilian right wing propaganda here. You refuse to see and accept evidence when it's presented to you and turn round and accuse others of bias.
At some point, you cross over from being misguided to an embarrassment to yourself.
I'm not "amplifying" anything. I'm posting my genuine thoughts in the only place where I feel comfortable doing so.
If this stuff is "right wing propaganda", then it's damn good propaganda, because it convinced me. I genuinely believe it's the truth.
I do accept that I could be wrong. This is, in fact, the reason why I post. I am desperately hoping you people are going to show me that my entire world view is wrong and that I'm mistaken. You think I want to believe that I live in a juristocracy, a dictatorship of the judiciary? It's a painful truth that I absolutely don't want to be true. Yet that is the conclusion I have reached, after personally witnessing the actioms of the supreme court circa 2022.
If you think otherwise, then say so and explain your reasoning. Why do you think I take the time to painstakingly elaborate on my thought process every single time it's brought up? I want you all to attack it. If you can make the case that I'm wrong, then I will be forced to accept it. If I haven't accepted something, it's because I wasn't convinced by whatever "evidence" you claim people have showed me before.
The worst thing you could possibly do, however, is reply to me with these subtle implications of mental illness, as though my brain was not working correctly. If you have to stoop to this sort of disgusging gaslighting, I will take it as a sign that I am right.
Another poster linked to your previous comment regarding the rainforest.
What's your thought process behind your comment:
"If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice."
Given the following facts:
- Climate change is real
- The Amazon stores around 15–20 years of global CO2 emissions. Burning it down would release all that.
- It maintains the rainfall system needed by farms and general Brazilian economy
- There is so much biodiversity in the Amazon and so much unexplored. By protecting it, it preserves biological resources and research relevant to food and medicine.
- Many indigenous people live there (2 million?). So it's OK to just destroy their home?
Any why do you need to burn down the Amazon to build a Brazilian semi-conductor industry?
I think it's clear, if Bolsonaro Jr would have won, he'd continue his father's approach to it, i.e. continue with deforestation and loosen environmental rules.
As I said in that thread, it was merely a rhetoric device to express the fact that I value my nation's development far more than I value the rainforest.
Every election, someone like Greta Thunberg shows up and tells everyone to vote for Lula to save the Amazon.
What about the Brazilian people? Our industry? Our economy? Our prosperity? Our autonomy? Our independence? Our sovereignty?
They couldn't care less about any of that.
The suggestion that we should slow down our own development "to safeguard the Amazon" is offensive to me.
I'll say it again: if burning that jungle down would magically turn Brazil into China or the US, with high value industries, space program, well equipped military, nuclear weapons... I'd sacrifice it all without losing even one second of sleep.
Note the "if", it's important. There's no reason to burn it all down just for kicks. There must be significant advantage for the trade to be worth it. The point is: the trade is on the table as far as I'm concerned. We can endeavour to preserve it, but if it gets in the way of national interests then it definitely must go.
I think it's a false premise to begin with. Protecting your natural resources and rich biodiversity doesn't mean Brazilians have to suffer.
But thanks for clarifying your comment and position.
I get that Lula isn't great, politics is hard. But from the outside it looks like a small majority of Brazilians have voted to say 'not another Bolsonaro'. He would have probably continued like his father and fostered closer ties to Trump and borrowing a few tactics from his playbook, i.e. definitely not good for the average Joe like us.
Good for corporations? Yes - hence why Meta and co tried to push Bolsonaro.
> But thanks for clarifying your comment and position.
Thank you for listening in good faith.
I supported Bolsonaro because I saw his election as the only possible way to defeat the supreme court judges, who I believe are dictators. To me this was a priority that overrode all other concerns.
I do not at all share his alignment with Trump and Israel, and especially not his privatization efforts. I'd rather Brazil align itself with China. I understand people's rejection of Bolsonaro, and even agree. The very first comment in this thread came from me, and I expressed this opinion through it:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237602
> Bolsonaro was closer to US interests than I'd like.
Unfortunately, it's been flagged to death for reasons unknown.
I clarified my overall position here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237862
Brazil isn't alone in neither option being good. The US has their own (pro-bolsonaro, as fate would have it) supreme court enabled god-king at the moment.
Lula may well be guilty of corruption, but Bolsonaro (senior) isn't in it for wider Brazil either. I'm not trying to preach disillusionment, but in 2026 in most of the heavily polarised countries, if we start from a position that they are both acting in pure unadulterated self-interest we'll at least not have blinkers on with respect to the saviour fascist "says what everyone is thinking" strongman, or the current polished establishment status quo spokesman, etc.
> The US has their own (pro-bolsonaro, as fate would have it) supreme court enabled god-king at the moment.
That's genuinely terrifying. Can you elaborate on what's going on in the US? I haven't been tracking US politics.
I agree with you about Bolsonaro, but he was the only chance we had to defeat Lula and oppose the supreme court. It's all over now.
> however, is reply to me with these subtle implications of mental illness, as though my brain was not working correctly
Really? Here is a comment you made very recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50228883
> If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice.
If you did a poll based on statements like these, 100% of people will tell you that you need serious help.
That's quite a shocking comment. I was willing to give that poster the benefit of the doubt, but saying it's OK to burn down the entire Amazon rainforest is quite something.
I'm a doctor. You know nothing about mental health, and neither does the crowd you plan on polling. Looks like you're simply offended by my opinions, and that's fine.
That maybe you should take a deep breath and consider that your views have been clouded by a deeply corrupt bigot with ties to organized crime that has used the last decade to manipulate people into thinking he is "the savior" and "a true patriot" that will essentially make "Brazil great again" with a suck-ass motto "Deus, Pátria e Família" taken straight out of 1930s flavor of fascism while inciting the population into dividing themselves and constantly making ploys in order to take people's eyes away from him while he performs his wrongdoings with the means of every conceived vile strategy straight out of the same playbook Trump uses?
This is the Bolsonaro I know. I'm here to kindly ask you to free your mind from the shackles of his vile social network and see for yourself what he truly is, including seemingly innocuous "family" whatsapp groups and so on.
You seem to think I'm some kind of Bolsonaro loyalist. I'm not.
I don't think Bolsonaro is a savior. I think he is a traitor to his country and to everybody who ever supported him.
I think that if he had actually had balls, he would have actually attempted a coup. Then he would have either won outright or gone down fighting, and his little prison term would have actually been warranted. What he did instead was hop on a plane to the USA like a rat and let my fellow countrymen take the fall for him. His subsequent arrest was predictable, and I didn't feel sorry for him. I don't even defend him against the coup accusations. My position is that the supreme court enacted its own silent coup in 2019 and usurped all power. His coup would merely be a counter to the supreme court's own coup.
I also don't generally disagree with people when they criticize the Bolsonaro family's calls for sanctions against Brazil as a political maneuver. That is treason. I celebrated the Magnitsky sanctions against the supreme court judges, not the ones Trump enacted against the whole country.
My general position is anti-supreme court. You can find me temporarily aligned with Bolsonaro for the purposes of defeating the influence of the supreme court, an effort that clearly failed as of today. You won't find me defending his plans to privatize and sell off the country to the USA and Israel.
There is exactly one politician which represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. He's dead, and is not at all similar to Bolsonaro. I suggest you read about him if you want to understand what I actually think.
I've also been drawing uncomfortably close to the extreme left wing party PCO. Inexplicably, they share many of the viewpoints that I express here. They too are shunned by the "traditional" left that Lula represents, for the same reasons as yours. Pretty wild.
> inciting the population into dividing themselves
Lula's the one who pioneered the politics of polarization in this country. He feeds off Bolsonarism as much as Bolsonarism feeds off him.
> his vile social network
> "family" whatsapp groups and so on
I participate in exactly zero of such channels. HN is the only forum where I post my political viewpoints, and only on Brazil threads. I don't talk about politics with family members at all.