BRAZIL
Do Not Pass Go
Brazil’s Supreme Court rejected former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s plea to avoid jail while he appeals against a 12-year sentence on corruption charges, setting the stage for the popular politician to spend the rest of the ongoing presidential election behind bars.
The court rejected by 6-5 Lula’s lawyers’ request for a preventative habeas corpus, Bloomberg reported. It’s now up to Sergio Moro, the judge who prosecuted Lula, to decide whether to jail him immediately or follow standard procedure and delay for one or two weeks.
Lula was already banned from running in the ongoing election due to the corruption conviction. But Brazil has allowed exceptions to that rule in the past, and Lula was nevertheless polling ahead of all the other candidates. Some analysts expect stocks to get a bump when the market reopens today due to the easing of fears he’d undo recent pro-market reforms.
It remains to be seen whether putting him behind bars rallies his supporters or hurts the fortunes of his Workers’ Party, which said it would continue to push for his candidacy in the October polls.
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