Lula: If Temer wants to be president, he should go out and get votes
On Saturday (2), in Fortaleza, Lula had said that the bid for Rousseff's impeachment is an attempted coup, 
Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva suggested on Monday evening (Apr. 4) that Vice-President Michel Temer should “go campaigning for votes on the streets” if he wants to become Brazil's president, in a rebuke of Temer's stance on the impeachment case against President Dilma Rousseff.
“I have nothing against Michel Temer. Only I would tell him, 'If you want to be the president, run for an election, man. Go campaigning for votes on the streets,” Lula told a cheering audience at an event in support for President Dilma Rousseff in front of the local metalworkers' union in São Bernardo do Campo, where he began his career as a trade unionist over forty years ago.
If he takes office as minister, Lula said, he will pursue dialogue with social movements again. He said he wants to “talk” rather than “rule”.
“I'll be talking with social movements again. We'll restore dialogue so that everyone feels they are an important part of the things that happen in this country,” he said, adding that “If anyone complains that President Dilma [Rousseff] does not talk to them, we'll prove them wrong, because I'll be talking a lot. Are you going to rule the country? Well, I'm going to talk.”
For Lula, the government needs to shift the focus of its economic policy.
“We need to understand that we have to fix certain things in our economic policy. We need to understand that it is important to rule, to talk with the market. But our market is the working people, the consumers, the housewives, these are the people we should focus our policy on,” he said.
According to the former president, the government has to understand that “workers get mad at the government when unemployment is around. We need to realize that this is the way things have always been.” He added a comparison, “When mom botches the cooking, we don't throw away the food. We help her make it better.”
Mobilization against impeachment
Lula showed confidence about the mobilization against impeachment and urged the population to take to the streets while the Chamber of Deputies votes the impeachment proceeding against President Rousseff. His speech was met at several points with shouts of “There will be no coup”.
“I keep my peace and love. They [the opposition] are the ones who should be upset, because people took to the streets when that was not that much expected, people are going to take to the streets, and we're going to make sure our comrade Dilma continues her term legally, as the Constitution dictates,” he said.
According to the former president, the conservative sectors of the country have grown “weary” of democracy. “Not because democracy is not a good thing, but because it has enabled us to make the greatest social revolution ever in the country, without firing a single shot. Democracy would be a good thing if these people were forever [in power], but democracy has enabled an ordinary metalworker to win an election, it has enabled a woman to win an election,” he said.
“What makes them terrified is the possibility that Lula could be back in the game in 2018,” he went on.
In his speech, Lula said the election campaigns of the ruling Workers' Party (PT) have been supported by business donations, as well as those of most political parties. Bit, he said, the Workers' Party has joined the battle against corporate campaign funding.
“It looks as though the PT was the only party to fund its campaigns with corporate donations. Then I guess the PSDB [the main opposition party] probably asks for their donations from churches, right? And the other parties as well. I don't know anyone who has sold their house to run for an election, I don't know anyone who has sold their car to run for an election—there's always someone donating. And yet which party has stood up against corporate donations? The Workers' Party has,” he said.
On Saturday (2), in Fortaleza, Lula had said that the bid for Rousseff's impeachment is an attempted coup, and that Michel Temer, as a lawyer, should realize that.
Through his press office, Temer rejected Lula's remarks, saying that “speaking as a constitutional law professor,” he is sure that “there is no coup going on in Brazil”.
Translated by Mayra Borges
Fonte: Lula: If Temer wants to be president, he should go out and get votes
