Spensy Pimentel
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - "I am here today to announce that I am once more candidate for the presidency of the Republic," president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared on Saturday (24), in Brasília, in an address to the national convention of his party, the PT, which approved the ticket composed of Lula and José Alencar as vice-presidential nominee.

"I am here to tell you that I have humbly decided to submit my name and my government to the judgment of my Brazilian brothers," he affirmed.

According to the PT's press office, the vote was only among the 21 members of the party's executive commission, not the 4.5 thousand delegates who attended the convention.

"The people will fashion a political victory of the Brazilian nation against the minority that always wanted to rule Brazil with their backs turned towards the majority of the population. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva represents much more than a president of the Republic. He is the leader our people regard as capable of raising Brazil to the status of a politically, socially, and culturally just nation," the president of the PT, Ricardo Berzoini, commented in his speech.

Berzoini said that the party's activists will mobilize themselves for the campaign. "We shall wage a fight not just to extend Lula's presidential mandate for four more years, but to win a debate in the country politically. Because, contrary to what some people want to assert, it is not an election that will divide Brazil between the rich and the poor," he added. "Brazil is presently at an historical juncture."

The convention also heard from Vitor Paulo, president of the PRB, a party allied with the PT, and long-time allies, such as the presidents of the PCdoB, Renato Rabelo, and the PSB, Eduardo Campos. Representatives of the PTB and the PMDB, which belong to the PT's ruling coalition, also participated in the convention.

Translation: David Silberstein