Thanks for the info. I don't follow Brazilian politics, but somehow the picture of a corrupt ex-president going to jail persisted in my head, since that was the news we were getting here back in the time.

I couldn't understand why our news in Germany was pretending that a guy convinced of corruption would be a saviour of Brazil against the evil Bolsonaro.

That highlights one of the main problems in our societies. We just accept information served to us by our governments without much checking. Either because we don't care about every topic, or because we don't have a means to actually check.

When the baseline of corruption is high enough and those who judge you are equally or more corrupt, convictions for "corruption" are a weapon from those who do not want a specific someone on the government rather than real intention of reducing corruption.

Simplifying, it's like this: If the road to presidency is corrupt, you either become also corrupt (on a varying degree) or stay as one of those parties with no more than 1% of the votes. But then, there's a pact of silence between cronies. And those who are accused of corruption are the ones that either went too far or went against powerful people in the government.

I take all those trials with a grain of salt.

This reminds me of why I hate when government agencies excuse an overly broad rule by saying they "won't prioritize enforcement" against favored/minor actors. Eg [1].

[1] https://www.axios.com/2022/09/13/us-treasury-department-torn...

Lula was condemned in 3 different courts. Not unanimously because the higher court judges disagreed about increasing his sentence by a small amount or a lrge amount.

Al the cases were dismissed because a new law was passed that created a new court and said every case like Lula's should be judged only on that new court.