Lula Already in the Electoral Dispute, Says PT President

Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is already fully involved in the electoral dispute in Brazil, said Gleisi Hoffmann, leader of the Workers'' Party (PT).

Lula is being the center of political discussions in the country; There is no way to discuss elections without his participation, because he has popular preference, said the senator, commenting on the results of the most recent poll of the Vox Populi Institute released the day before.

'The political and electoral strength of Lula is so much, that there is no way to exclude him from the presidential elections next October,' Hoffmann said in statements amplified by the digital newspaper Brasil 247 and in which he described as very painful the confinement for more than 100 days of the leader historic of the PT.

The national president of the PT also said that after knowing the results of the investigation the former dignitary said he will feel more excited and more energized to face the adversities of his unjust imprisonment.

Despite carrying more than three months of unjust and illegal prison, Lula continues to grow in the preference of the electorate, said the PT leader and insisted that the founder of the PT is the person capable of removing the country from the crisis in which it finds itself, pacify it and 'give back the inclusive development we had begun to build'.

According to the CUT / Vox Populi poll, Lula would win the first round with 58 percent of valid votes.

In a stimulated scenario (when the names of the candidates are presented to the interviewees) the former president's voting intentions reach up to 41 percent, two points more than last May.

Meanwhile, the sum of the support that all the other adversaries would get together amounted to only 29 percent.

The best placed after Lula is the candidate of the extreme right Jair Bolsonaro, of the Social Liberal Party (PSL), with 12 percent, followed by Ciro Gomes, of the Labor Democratic Party (PDT for its acronym in Portuguese), which reached the support of five percent of the respondents.

Earlier this week, former President Lula da Silva said he does not consider any hypothesis that excludes his imminent registration as a candidate for the October 7 elections.