The president () stated, on Thursday night (16), that 2026 will be a sacred year and demanded that the left knows how to convince the people and talk to different sectors, such as evangelicals.
Lula spoke at the 16th Congress of the PC do B, at the Ulysses Guimarães convention center, in Brasília. The president sat next to the minister and president of PC do B, Luciana Santos (Science and Technology). PC do B is part of a federation with PT and PV.
“2026 is a sacred year. We have to do things differently. […] Evangelicals are not against us, we are the ones who don’t know how to talk to them. The error is in us, not in them. […] We have distanced ourselves from the people”, said the president, who admitted once again that he should be a candidate for re-election.
“Our challenge is not to please ourselves. Our challenge is to convince others, who are not yet ours, to come with us”, he said.
“We don’t have to give much importance to Faria Lima, our speech is for the people”, stated Lula, demanding “a language that people know”.
According to the president, progressive speech is made for activists. “We forget to talk to millions of people who are not organized and often would like to participate, but are not even invited.”
The PT member also called the former president () a “politically grotesque figure”.
He once again said that the left’s electoral results for the Presidency of the Republic should also be reflected in the election for deputies and, again, criticized Congress as the worst in history. “These days they approved a PEC that protected gangs. What madness is this?”, he asked in reference to .
Lula is still home. “Everyone says that we will transform Brazil into Venezuela. Brazil will never be Venezuela, and Venezuela will never be Brazil. Each one will be their own. What we defend is that the Venezuelan people are the masters of their destiny. And it is not any president of another country who has to make a guess as to what Venezuela will be or Cuba will be.”
The event was attended by the minister (Secretariat of Institutional Relations); minister Sidônio Palmeira (Secretariat of Social Communication); minister Alexandre Silveira (Mines and Energy), from the PSD; minister Wolney Queiroz (Social Security), from PDT; the president of PT, Edinho Silva; the mayor of Recife and president of , João Campos; the president of Podemos, deputy Renata Abreu (SP); and a series of left-wing parliamentarians.
The event was also attended by representatives of the communist parties of China and Cuba.
Luciana Santos and João Campos reinforced the PC do B and PSB alliance with Lula for the 2026 election.
“The watchword in our party is a broad front and isolating the extreme right in our country”, said the leader of the PC do B. In her speech, she repudiated US interference in Venezuela and stated that “a climate of war is precipitating in the Caribbean”. “We are under attack from a country that thinks it owns the world”, he added.
Luciana also criticized the maintenance of high interest rates by the Central Bank. , Lula freed his assistants to expand their criticism of Gabriel Galípolo’s management.
In his speech, Edinho defended Lula’s reelection in 2026 and the “construction of a broad field of alliances with democratic forces” to “tell the world that fascism has no place in Brazil.”
The PT president stated that fascism was defeated in 2022 and the 2023 coup attempt was also defeated, but added: “we have not yet imposed the final defeat on the extreme right in Brazil”.
Edinho also commented on what he called the US president’s threats to . “The threats that were made yesterday against the Venezuelan government and the Venezuelan people are unacceptable,” he said.
