Brasilia
\nBrazil\u2019s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva\u2019s bid to delay a 12-year prison sentence for corruption in a ruling that could upend presidential elections in Latin America\u2019s biggest country. The 6-5 ruling means that Lula-who was Brazil\u2019s most popular leader on record and is the frontrunner ahead of the October 7 polls-could be arrested within days.<\/p>\n
The 11 judges deliberated for more than 10 hours from Wednesday into Thursday on Lula\u2019s request to avoid going to prison while he mounts fresh appeals. At 5-5, it was court president Carmen Lucia who cast the tie-breaking vote, saying that postponing serving of sentences \u201ccould lead to impunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Broadcast live on television, the drama left Brazilians as divided as the judges themselves, and raised questions over the state of the country\u2019s democracy after the top army general appeared to urge prison for the 72-year-old founder of the leftist Workers\u2019 Party.<\/p>\n
On the right, Lula is considered the face of corruption sweeping the country\u2019s political elite. His imprisonment has long been the goal of prosecutors running Brazil\u2019s \u201cCar Wash\u201d anti-graft investigation and he is now their biggest scalp.<\/p>\n
Leftists, however, remember Lula\u2019s 2003-2010 rule as a time when Brazil used its wealth to lift tens of millions of people out of poverty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brasilia Brazil\u2019s Supreme Court on Thursday rejected former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva\u2019s bid to delay a 12-year prison sentence for corruption in a ruling that could upend presidential elections in Latin America\u2019s biggest country. The 6-5 ruling means that Lula-who was Brazil\u2019s most popular leader on record and is the frontrunner ahead of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27094,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27093"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27095,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27093\/revisions\/27095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}