Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said today that nobody has bigger ethical authority than himself to fight corruption and that charges of corruption should be investigated without tainting the names of the innocent.
“They don’t realize whom they are dealing with. I will repeat one thing: You don’t play around with corruption, because you can’t smear people’s names, bare them in front of society, and then prove nothing without anyone’s begging for forgiveness. We’ve already seen this before.”
Lula pointed out that the accusations will be investigated, regardless of who is charged, without bluster.
“I have already witnessed bluster in this country. In this country I have already seen someone get elected for his reputation as a hunter of fat cats. And everybody saw what happened.”
Ex-president Fernando Collor de Mello, who guaranteed in his electoral campaign that he would end corruption, resigned from office after being tried for impeachment in the Chamber of Deputies in 1992.
President Lula was in Luziânia, in the state of Goiás, today, for the opening of the Congress of the National Union of Family Farming and Solidary Economy Cooperatives
ABr