Brazil’s Lula names vice president as running mate as polls show him slipping

SAO PAULO: Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva on Tuesday named his vice president as his running mate in Brazil’s October elections, with polls showing the veteran leftist president in a neck-and-neck race with his main rival.Lula, 80, is seeking a fourth term in office against Flavio Bolsonaro, the 44-year-old son of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup against Lula.Recent polls show that Flavio Bolsonaro’s support is rising and that they would be neck-and-neck with Lula if they faced off in a runoff. In December, Lula led by 15 points.Lula’s vice president and running mate is Geraldo Alckmin, a moderate conservative and former rival to the president. They joined forces in 2022 to take on the then-incumbent president, the elder Jair Bolsonaro. In addition to serving as Vice President, Alckmin currently serves as Minister of Industry.“My colleague Alkmin will have to leave the ministry because he is once again a candidate for vice president,” Lula told a public cabinet meeting. Alckmin is a 73-year-old doctor who served four terms as governor of São Paulo, Brazil’s richest and most populous state. He ran for president twice as the candidate of the conservative Brazilian Social Democratic Party.In 2006, he lost to Lula in the runoff.On Tuesday, Lula told the cabinet the story of how he was re-elected as president of Brazil’s metalworkers union in 1978 and told his family that he would serve out his final term before returning to family life.“Fifty years have passed and I’ve never done that,” he joked.A Datafolha poll released on March 6 showed that 46% of voters supported Lula and 43% for Bolsonaro, a tie within the margin of error.Bolsonaro, who serves in the Senate, was named a presidential candidate by his father after he was sentenced to 27 years in prison by the Supreme Court for conspiring to stay in power after losing the 2022 election to Lula.