On March 8th, the Supreme Court of Brazil annulled the conviction of President Lula da Silva, the leader of Latin America’s largest country from 2003 to 2011. The left-wing icon was originally indicted in 2016 on charges of corruption in Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash), an investigation into the state-owned oil company Petrobras. While Lula’s conviction prevented him from running in the 2018 election, the Supreme Court’s recent decision has restored his full political rights. The 75-year-old Workers’ Party leader has declined to declare his candidacy in the 2022 election to unseat President Jair Bolsonaro, but as he recently told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “If I’m well in my health with the energy and power that I have today, I can reassure you that I will not deny that invitation.” The stage is set for a 2022 showdown between the two most popular and polarizing figures in contemporary Brazilian politics. 

Supporters of Lula long claimed the corruption charges to be a political hit job to prevent Lula from running again in 2018, and their frustration is understandable. At the end of his last term, Lula’s approval rating was around 80%. After decades of rule under military dictatorships and austere governments, Lula’s terms were a breath of fresh air for lower-class Brazilians. From 2003 to 2011, Brazilians saw high rates of economic growth and even larger declines in poverty. 36 million were lifted out of extreme poverty and 40 million moved into the middle class due to a flourishing economy and welfare programs undertaken as part of the Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) initiative. Hunger and illiteracy were nearly eradicated, while financial services, affordable transportation, and higher education were brought to more people than ever before. Lula also sought to make his country a major player on the global stage, and while his ultimate goal of securing Brazil a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council didn’t come to fruition, Lula proved his utility as a pragmatic mediator who facilitated constructive negotiations between regional and international adversaries. Recently, Lula has urged President Biden to call a G20 summit focused on finding an equitable process of international vaccine distribution.

Lula, who Barack Obama once called “the most popular politician on Earth,” found himself on the edge of democracy when he was arrested in 2016. What began in 2014 as an inquiry into money laundering quickly evolved into a far-reaching investigation into the endemic corruption of Brazilian politics that exposed corporate executives, politicians of every party, and the president himself. The core of the charges involved construction companies receiving state contracts in exchange for bribes to executives and politicians. In a nation fraught with corruption and an unaccountable political class, many saw Lava Jato as a paradigm shift that put no one above the law. Lava Jato was a long-running media spectacle that caused many observers to put faith in the prosecution to end Brazil’s deep-seated corruption. Lula’s successor Dilma Rousseff was impeached for her controversial handling of Lava Jato in 2016, and in 2017, Lula was found guilty of receiving a beachfront apartment in return for remunerative Petrobras contracts. Lula had served two years of his twelve year prison sentence when a groundbreaking investigation by The Intercept in June 2019 revealed that Lava Jato was compromised by procedural malfeasance and political bias. The Intercept released substantial evidence of communication and collusion between Judge Sergio Moro and Lava Jato’s lead prosecutors during the trial. However, because the Supreme Court overturned Lula’s conviction on procedural grounds rather than evidentiary ones, it is not certain that this recent decision marks the end of Lula’s legal troubles. In his interview with CNN last month Lula expressed his faith that any further litigations will vindicate him. Even if Lula is guilty of corruption, the prosecution cannot use any of the evidence collected during Lava Jato and will have to build a new case from the ground up. Lava Jato’s legacy highlights the limits of the judicial system as a means to re-democratize a thoroughly corrupt political sphere.

With the collapse of Lava Jato, the incumbent Bolsonaro lost his principal indictment of Lula’s governance. The far-right president’s handling of COVID will undoubtedly be the central topic of the 2022 election. Bolsonaro’s dismissive attitude toward the virus has made Brazil the epicenter of COVID transmission, with both cases and mortalities skyrocketing. Other topics that are likely to take center stage are the economy, severely damaged by the pandemic, and the environment, which has also degraded due to Bolosnaro’s laissez-faire policies. Bolsonaro originally campaigned as an anti-corruption strongman in the wake of Lava Jato, going as far as to appoint Sergio Moro to be Minister of Justice and Public Security, but recent developments will make this position untenable in 2022. Both candidates will seek to distance themselves from the biggest political scandal in contemporary Brazilian politics and instead focus on solutions to the numerous crises gripping Brazil.