Not even jail stops them! 3 candidates who campaigned from jail

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Who said that being in prison prevented you to be in an electoral campaign? Here in LatinAmerican Post we tell you more

Being imprisoned does not mean being prevented from being a candidate for the next elections and the candidates that we will show you next are clear examples of it. Despite being in being already sentenced, many of these characters have their eyes on the elections.

Leer en español: ¡Ni las rejas los detienen! 3 candidatos que hicieron campaña desde la cárcel

1. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

The controversial former president of Brazil is sentenced to 12 years in prison for the crimes of corruption imputed by the Court of Porto Alegre. The sentence began to meet in mid-2018, facing the elections in which he was outlined as a favorite.

Lula did not care much about campaigning from prison,  as it was one more reason to make his followers believe in the strength of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT). Lula began the campaign with tranquility and from the beginning was considered as the favorite, because, according to polls, he was emerging as the next president having more than 50% vote intention.

It was not until September 2018 that the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil (TSE) ratified the invalidity of his candidacy. Immediately Lula had to name Fernando Haddad, the second option within the Party. With this appointment and the decision of the TSE, the elections took a new direction, as the actual president, Jair Bolsonaro rose in the polls. Something he had not been able to do when Lula was inside the options.

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2. Selahattin Demirtas

The opponent and pro-Kurd belongs to the People's Democratic Party (HDP) of Turkey, which is dedicated to creating the opposition to the conservatism that has ruled the country in the last decade. Unlike Lula, Demirtas has been in jail since 2016, after being accused of "alleged links to the illegal Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)", as reported by La Vanguardia.

For the elections of June 2018, Demirtas had to carry out his presidential campaign from his cell, where the television cameras arrived to fulfill the demands of the Turkish Electoral Board (YSK). At that time, the candidate had 20 minutes to finalize his proposals.

Despite the above, the opposition could not beat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who received 52.59% of the votes, while Demirtas obtained 8.40%. Meanwhile, in December 2018 he was sentenced to five years in prison "for other charges of terrorist propaganda, a sentence that he has also appealed to the Constitutional Court of the country," according to Europa Press.

3. Oriol Junqueras

This Catalan politician had to carry out his electoral campaign from a cell. The general elections will take place on April 28 and Junqueras is expected to be the head of the independence movement Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC). Junquera is in prison since 2017 when several Catalan parties made a revolution, with the aim of promoting the independence of the region.

For the next elections in April, Junqueras announced his candidacy to be a deputy of the Congress of Deputies, as El País noted. In the same way, he announced that he would also participate in the elections of the European Parliament. So far, and according to La Vanguardia, Junqueras could not participate in the televised debates that are about to take place. The decision was denied by the Electoral Board (JEC).

LatinAmerican Post | Laura Viviana Guevara Muñoz
Translated from "¡Ni las rejas los detienen! 3 candidatos que hicieron campaña desde la cárcel "