Who is Lula? From ex-worker and prisoner to Brazil's president again

Who is Lula? From ex-worker and prisoner to Brazil's president again

Even for a seasoned politician like Lula, bringing together a deeply split country will be difficult.

At first glance, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has pulled off the impossible once more: in just three weeks, he reversed first-round defeat to win re-election as Brazil’s president.

That was no small feat for a man who had failed three times before his first successful bid for the office in 2002.

When he took office in 2003, he became Brazil’s first left-wing leader in nearly 50 years.

Now 80 and highly experienced in governing a democracy as vast as Brazil, he has defied the pattern of electoral wins by right-wing leaders in Latin America whose politics resemble those of US President Donald Trump.

Lula’s first presidential win in 2002 capped an extraordinary rise from poverty.

Born into a poor, illiterate peasant family, Lula worked as a peanut seller and shoe-shine boy as a child, and did not learn to read until he was 10.

He later trained as a metalworker and found employment in an industrial city near São Paulo, where he lost the little finger of his left hand in an accident in the 1960s.

Politics did not initially attract Lula, but he immersed himself in trade union activism.

After being elected leader of the 100,000-strong Metalworkers’ Union in 1975, he reshaped union activism in Brazil by turning what had largely been government-friendly bodies into a strong independent movement.

In 1980, Lula united trade unionists, intellectuals, Trotskyites and Church activists to create the Workers’ Party (PT), the first major socialist party in the country’s history.

Over time, the PT moved away from its revolutionary aim of changing Brazil’s power structure and adopted a more pragmatic social democratic agenda.

Lula came to power promising sweeping changes to Brazil’s political and economic system.

He pledged to end hunger and build a nation that was self-assured, compassionate and outward-looking.

During his presidency, Lula poured billions of dollars into social programmes and can fairly claim to have helped reduce Brazil’s long-standing inequalities.

By raising the minimum wage well above inflation and expanding state support for the poorest through the Bolsa Familia family grant programme, he helped about 44 million people and strengthened his backing among the poor.

Still, many analysts say the programme did not tackle the deeper causes of poverty, including poor education.

He left office eight years later, after two terms, with exceptionally high approval ratings for a departing Latin American leader, having boosted Brazil’s standing internationally and overseen the country’s longest stretch of economic growth in three decades.

Barred from seeking a third term, Lula stepped down and was soon diagnosed with throat cancer. He even shaved off his trademark beard during treatment. Doctors said he was cured in 2012.

Under the successor he chose, progress slowed. The economic boom also turned into recession, and Brazil’s political life was shaken by a vast corruption probe known as Operation Car Wash.

Lula was among those drawn into the scandal. In July 2017, he was convicted of corruption and sentenced to more than nine years in prison for taking a beachside apartment as a bribe from engineering company OAS - a sentence later increased on appeal to 12 years.

He was also sentenced to 12 years and 11 months for corruption and money laundering for receiving bribes from two construction and engineering firms through improvements to a country house used by him and his family.

He has always denied wrongdoing, saying the allegations against him were politically driven.

In 2019, he was freed after serving just over 18 months, following a Supreme Court ruling that his imprisonment had been unlawful because it came before all appeals were exhausted.

Those convictions were overturned in 2021, allowing Lula to run for a third term in 2022, when he defeated right-winger Jair Bolsonaro.

When he returned to office in 2023, he said it would be his final term, yet his party backed him again this year, even though he turns 81 on Tuesday.

Even PT supporters admit he accomplished more in his first two terms - from January 2003 to December 2010 - than in his latest four years in office.

And while his supporters called him the “saviour of the Amazon” before the 2022 election, praising his commitment to protecting the rainforest, some environmentalists have criticised several of his recent decisions.

In particular, his support for exploratory oil drilling in offshore waters near the mouth of the Amazon has drawn criticism.

Lula says he remains committed to eventually phasing out fossil fuels and argues that oil income is essential to funding Brazil’s shift to clean energy.

His government has also cited the fall in deforestation in the Amazon - satellite data indicates the area deforested in the first half of 2026 fell to its lowest level in the past decade - as evidence that its policies are succeeding.

Lula’s third term has coincided with Trump’s return to office.

The two men sit at opposite ends of the political spectrum and have found it impossible not to air their disagreements publicly.

The Brazilian leader told the BBC in September 2025 that he had no relationship with Trump.

Although the US runs a trade surplus with Brazil, Donald Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods in July that year, saying the trial on coup charges of Brazil’s right-wing former president Jair Bolsonaro was the trigger. Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence, and it was his son, Flávio, whom Lula defeated in Sunday’s election run-off.

Lula accused Trump of foreign interference and said “he’s not emperor of the world”. But relations improved after a White House meeting in May this year, after which the two leaders traded public praise - Trump called Lula “dynamic”, while the Brazilian president said he left the meeting “very satisfied”.

The two governments still disagree on major issues such as crime, and Lula admitted they are especially far apart on trade.

Referring to what Trump has called the “Donroe doctrine” - his administration’s national security strategy asserting that US dominance in the Western hemisphere should not be challenged - Lula has insisted that “Brazil does not fit into anyone’s backyard”.

Lula has also criticised the fact that five countries - the permanent members of the UN Security Council - can veto decisions, arguing that this favours the winners of World War Two while excluding nations representing billions of people such as Brazil, Germany, India and Japan, as well as African countries.

He defends his continued ties with Russia and China and sees Brics as a rising counterweight to the West.

He has also defended his decision to keep buying Russian oil while Russia wages war in Ukraine.