World

Confidence and exuberance at Lula da Silva rally in Brazil – ‘We are in a battle and we are going to win’

Published

3 years ago

October 8, 2022

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Music, cheering, noise, chaos, and above all – dancing.

There is nothing quite like being on the Brazilian election trail.

Exuberant is the only word I can think of.

We joined the supporters of Lula da Silva in Sao Bernardo do Campo, a dormitory town on the edge of Sao Paulo city.

Enormous sound systems blared out the favourite Lula anthems, and people danced and cheered and sang along.

They came in their thousands to see the man they consider to be a saviour from the right-wing presidency of Jair Bolsonaro.

Lula, a former president, is bidding to stage a remarkable comeback to the top of the political ladder.

Arrested in 2018 on corruption charges, later quashed, he was consistently the most popular political leader in the world with approval ratings in the 80-90% range during his time in office from 2003 to 2011.

Many thought he could capture the presidency in the first round last Sunday, and he didn’t.

But, worse for both Lula and his party, President Bolsonaro confounded the polls and closed the gap to a handful of points.

Now everything is to play for in the days leading up to the decisive second round on 30 October.

Despite that exuberance on the streets, Lula’s team were shocked by how much the president made up ground. But the people we talked to in the crowds say they still believe in their man.

“We’re going to fight for him. I’m fighting,” says 61-year-old Maria Francisca Neves.

Maria has travelled from the Jardim Limpao favela, where she lives. She is unemployed and says she and many others are struggling to survive.

“We want them to fight for us, for us to be able to eat meat again, to have our table full of food, for us to have a glass of milk to drink in the morning and be able to give that to our children, to be able to go to university…”

“We are in a battle, and we are going to win. Lula will get there, I have faith in God, I thank God!” she added passionately.

Another supporter, Erivan Paulino de Souza, said he would have preferred Lula had won in the first round to put an end to the tension.

“But everything we have achieved in our lives has been through fighting – we go and conquer, nothing has ever been easy for us,” he explained.

“This is not the first election that has gone to the second round, and so we will fight until the end.”

They all waited in the blistering heat for hours when, finally, he appeared from the side door of the union building on the street where he was arrested in 2018.

He was helped onto the back of a truck, joined by politicians from his Workers’ Party.

And so began a chaotic caravan through the streets of the town.

This is the first time Lula has been back on the campaign trail since he failed in that first round, and they loved it.

The streets were jammed with supporters, waving flags, and dancing. Many were trying to touch Lula or to at least get his attention.

A huge cheer erupted when the would-be president began taking photos of the crowd with a professional camera.

Almost certainly a move to underline his basic campaign message that he is for the people and part of the people.

He has certainly aged and is not the energetic president of the past, but he still shows the touch of the ‘man of the people’ which has proved so popular for so long.

The real question though is whether his type of politics can appeal to an electorate that is already terribly divided.

Followed by thousands, we watched as Lula and his entourage and political colleagues wound their way through the streets.

Shoppers and shop owners watching on as this loud parade made its way to a nearby square.

Most held their hands in the air with their thumb and index fingers in the shape of an L.

L for Lula, they say, and L for love.

Once the caravan got to the square, the 76-year-old addressed the crowd, promising not to give up, and warning against the spread of misinformation.

“You know that our adversary’s speciality is to lie, seven or eight lies a day through fake news, through zap (WhatsApp), through any other way to talk to people.

“In the next 24 days, you have to be alert, you need to know how to tell truth from the lies,” he said.

Presidential elections are often won by the candidate with momentum.

In truth President Bolsonaro grabbed that momentum when he drew near to his adversary.

Lula needs new momentum now. And he and his team hope that this is the start.

World

What’s it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

Published

9 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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What's it like with the National Guard on the streets of DC?

👉 Follow Trump100 on your podcast app 👈

What’s it like on the streets of DC right now, as thousands of federal police patrol the streets?

Who is Steve Witkoff, the US envoy regularly meeting Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu to broker peace in Ukraine and Gaza?

And why is Californian Governor Gavin Newsom now tweeting like Donald Trump?

Martha Kelner and Mark Stone answer your questions.

If you’ve also got a question you’d like the Trump100 team to answer, you can email it to trump100@sky.uk.

You can also watch all episodes on our YouTube channel.

World

It’s been a confusing week – and Trump’s been made to look weak

Published

9 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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It’s been a confusing week.

The Monday gathering of European leaders and Ukraine’s president with Donald Trump at the White House was highly significant.

Ukraine latest: Trump changes tack

The leaders went home buoyed by the knowledge that they’d finally convinced the American president not to abandon Europe. He had committed to provide American “security guarantees” to Ukraine.

The details were sketchy, and sketched out only a little more through the week (we got some noise about American air cover), but regardless, the presidential commitment represented a clear shift from months of isolationist rhetoric on Ukraine – “it’s Europe’s problem” and all the rest of it.

Yet it was always the case that, beyond that clear achievement for the Europeans, Russia would have a problem with it.

Trump’s envoy’s language last weekend – claiming that Putin had agreed to Europe providing “Article 5-like” guarantees for Ukraine, essentially providing it with a NATO-like collective security blanket – was baffling.

Russia gives two fingers to the president

And throughout this week, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has repeatedly and predictably undermined the whole thing, pointing out that Russia would never accept any peace plan that involved any European or NATO troops in Ukraine.

“The presence of foreign troops in Ukraine is completely unacceptable for Russia,” he said yesterday, echoing similar statements stretching back years.

Remember that NATO’s “eastern encroachment” was the justification for Russia’s “special military operation” – the invasion of Ukraine – in the first place. All this makes Trump look rather weak.

It’s two fingers to the president, though interestingly, the Russian language has been carefully calibrated not to poke Trump but to mock European leaders instead. That’s telling.

The bilateral meeting (between Putin and Zelenskyy) hailed by Trump on Monday as agreed and close – “within two weeks” – looks decidedly doubtful.

Maybe that’s why he went along with Putin’s suggestion that there be a bilateral, not including Trump, first.

It’s easier for the American president to blame someone else if it’s not his meeting, and it doesn’t happen.

NATO defence chiefs met on Wednesday to discuss the details of how the security guarantees – the ones Russia won’t accept – will work.

European sources at the meeting have told me it was all a great success. And to the comments by Lavrov, a source said: “It’s not up to Lavrov to decide on security guarantees. Not up to the one doing the threatening to decide how to deter that threat!”

The argument goes that it’s not realistic for Russia to say from which countries Ukraine can and cannot host troops.

Would Trump threaten force?

The problem is that if Europe and the White House want Russia to sign up to some sort of peace deal, then it would require agreement from all sides on the security arrangements.

The other way to get Russia to heel would be with an overwhelming threat of force. Something from Trump, like: “Vladimir – look what I did to Iran…”. But, of course, Iran isn’t a nuclear power.

Something else bothers me about all this. The core concept of a “security guarantee” is an ironclad obligation to defend Ukraine into the future.

Future guarantees would require treaties, not just a loose promise. I don’t see Trump’s America truly signing up to anything that obliges them to do anything.

A layered security guarantee which builds over time is an option, but from a Kremlin perspective, would probably only end up being a repeat of history and allow them another “justification” to push back.

Image and reality don’t seem to match

Among Trump’s stream of social media posts this week was an image of him waving his finger at Putin in Alaska. It was one of the few non-effusive images from the summit.

He posted it next to an image of former president Richard Nixon confronting Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev – an image that came to reflect American dominance over the Soviet Union.

That may be the image Trump wants to portray. But the events of the past week suggest image and reality just don’t match.

The past 24 hours in Ukraine have been among the most violent to date.

World

At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

Published

9 hours ago

August 22, 2025

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At least 17 dead in Colombia after car bombing and helicopter attack

At least 17 people were killed after a car bombing and an attack on a police helicopter in Colombia, officials have said.

Authorities in the southwest city of Cali said a vehicle loaded with explosives detonated near a military aviation school, killing five people and injuring more than 30.

Authorities said at least 12 died in the attack on a helicopter transporting personnel to an area in Antioquia in northern Colombia, where they were to destroy coca leaf crops – the raw material used in the production of cocaine.

Antioquia governor Andres Julian said a drone attacked the helicopter as it flew over coca leaf crops.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro attributed both incidents to dissidents of the defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He said the aircraft was targeted in retaliation for a cocaine seizure that allegedly belonged to the Gulf Clan.

Who are FARC, and are they still active?

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist guerrilla organisation, was the largest of the country’s rebel groups, and grew out of peasant self-defence forces.

It was formed in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, carrying out a series of attacks against political and economic targets.

In 2016, after more than 50 years of civil war, FARC rebels and the Colombian government signed a peace deal.

It officially ceased to be an armed group the following year – but some small dissident groups rejected the agreement and refused to disarm.

According to a report by Colombia’s Truth Commission in 2022, fighting between government forces, FARC, and the militant group National Liberation Army had killed around 450,000 people between 1985 and 2018.

Both FARC dissidents and members of the Gulf Clan operate in Antioquia.

It comes as a report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that coca leaf cultivation is on the rise in Colombia.

The area under cultivation reached a record 253,000 hectares in 2023, according to the UN’s latest available report.