Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s extraordinary political career spans five decades. Lula has become one of the most fascinating political operators of our young century. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency of Brazil in 1989, 1994, and 1988 before winning in 2002. He served two terms as President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, ending his second mandate as one of the most popular politicians in the world. In 2017 he was convicted of corruption-related charges and in 2018 he began serving his sentence in prison in Curitiba, remaining incarcerated for 580 days until his conviction was dismissed by the Supreme Court on jurisdictional grounds. In October 2022 Lula was elected President of Brazil for a third time, replacing the right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022). He is on course to run for president for an unprecedented fourth time in the October 2026 election.
Richard Lapper is an independent journalist and consultant. He worked at the Financial Times between 1990 and 2015. He was the newspaper’s Latin America editor between 1998 and 2008, headed up the FT’s investment research service on Latin America from 2010 until 2015, and ran the emerging market research service between 2014 and 2015. Lapper was also Southern Africa bureau chief (2008-2010), capital markets editor (1994-1997) and financial news editor (1997-1998) at the FT. Lapper’s previous book is Beef, Bible and Bullets: Brazil in the Age of Bolsonaro (Manchester University Press, 2021).
