'Love behind bars' The new life of Lula da Silva: free and with a wedding date
New illusion Lula da Silva, in love in jail
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
,
76,
will marry
his girlfriend
Rosângela da Silva,
better known as Janja, a
55-year
-old sociologist with whom
he fell in love while he was in prison.
The leader of the Brazilian left spent 580 days in jail
accused of alleged crimes of corruption.
Some time later, the Justice annulled the sentence alleging failures in the process and
made possible the political resurrection
of the leader of the left, who did not hesitate to
present himself as a candidate
and is now the favorite for the
next elections.
In the midst of the pre-campaign warm-up,
Lula
will take a break next Wednesday.
That day
he will marry Janja in an intimate ceremony.
It will be his third marriage.
Lula
was
widowed on two occasions:
in 1969 he lost
Maria de Lourdes da Silva
, two years after their marriage, due to medical errors following hepatitis and anemia.
Later, in 1974,
Lula
married
Marisa Letícia
, the great love of his life and
the mother of his four children.
He died in 2017, the victim of a stroke.
At the time, Lula blamed it on the strong
media and judicial pressure
that the couple lived, in the midst of a storm due to corruption allegations.
After that hard blow and his time in prison, Lula was reborn like a phoenix, not only on a political level: "
I am in love
as if I were 20 years old, as if she were
my first girlfriend.
I will get married in the most peaceful way possible and
I will do the happy campaign
(...) I have learned that when you lose your wife and you think that life no longer has meaning, when you think that everything is over, a person appears who
begins to give meaning to your life again
, "he recently told
Time
magazine .
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Little is known about the wedding, other than that
it will be held
in
São Bernardo do Campo,
the city on the outskirts of
São Paulo
where Lula began working as a metal worker and union leader and began his political career.
The singer and composer
Chico Buarque
and his wife, the lawyer
Carol Proner
,
will be the godparents.
The guests do not yet know the time and place of the wedding.
According to the Brazilian press, they
will receive the invitation
in the form of a
QR code
the day before, to preserve the privacy of the couple and also for security reasons.
Lula 's entourage has long
feared that he could suffer an attack.
Despite attempts to keep the ceremony as private as possible,
Janja shared her wedding gift
before the eyes of all of Brazil, at the ceremony in which Lula formalized his candidacy for the elections.
On a stage
with 4,000 spectators and with all the televisions live,
the future wife took the microphone and addressed Lula by surprise: "I want to share
my wedding gift with you
, since everyone will not be able to be there, I am going to share this gift with you
I love you.
"
The surprise consisted of a video that reissued the anthem of the first presidential campaign in which Lula participated, in 1989, called Without fear of being happy.
The new version, recorded by various artists,
deeply moved Lula
, who
made an effort not to cry.
In this romance, the personal and the political go hand in hand.
In fact,
Janja met Lula
many years ago,
when he was still her idol
and accompanied him during her caravans through Brazil.
They started dating
in December 2017, and in May of that year, Lula began serving a sentence in Curitiba, the city in the south of the country where she lived.
The relationship continued
with visits once a week
and the vigil that supporters of the former president maintained in front of the jail during the time he was imprisoned.
Janja participated in
the camping activities and there he adopted a stray dog who is now cared for in her boyfriend's apartment.
She is called Resistance.
Janja has an
increasingly central role in the pre-campaign and, according to some analysts,
has caused some tension
in the meetings of
the Workers' Party
, since she
does not have any formal position
but often acts as the voice of Lula.
The former president
, for his part, also
uses the relationship
to demonstrate vigor and energy despite his age.
Last year, a photo of Janja cuddling under the moonlight quickly went viral.
The reason?
Lula
was in a swimsuit and showed off a well-toned thigh.
"
I'm getting married this month.
A guy who
's 76 years old and in love like I am and
wants to get married
can only want the good for this country.
Brazil has a sick head and we are going to cure it,"
he said last week when launching his candidacy for the presidential elections in October this year.
Leader in the polls
Lula trusts that on January 1, 2023, the day of the inauguration of the new president, he will be the one to climb the ramp of the Planalto Palace in Brasilia hand in hand with his wife.
At the moment, the polls smile at him.
According to the latest poll, released this week by PodeData, he would win the October elections in the second round, with 49% of the vote, compared to 38% for Jair Bolsonaro.
But the campaign has just started and Lula already fears the rain of 'fake news' and attacks from the extreme right."We will respond with smiles, spreading love," he said at the start of the campaign a few days ago.
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