Former Goiás governor Ronaldo Caiado, a presidential candidate for the PSD party, compared a proposed broad amnesty for people convicted over the January 8, 2023, riots in Brasília to the Supreme Court's annulment of corruption convictions against President Lula, according to Folha de S.Paulo. Caiado made the remarks on Tuesday during an interview on Globo television as part of a series of sit-down interviews the network's evening newscast, Jornal Nacional, is holding with Brazil's leading 2026 presidential candidates, hosted by Renata Vasconcellos and César Tralli.
Caiado said that, if elected, he would send Congress a bill granting a broad, unrestricted amnesty to those convicted over the attacks on the headquarters of Brazil's three branches of government in the capital, arguing the move would help pacify the country. He described the pardon as equivalent to what he characterized as the Supreme Court's treatment of Lula, saying he intends to act the same way the Supreme Court, in its own special manner, also granted relief to President Lula.
The comparison contains a factual inaccuracy that Folha itself pointed out: Lula was not granted amnesty by the Supreme Court. The court annulled his convictions from the Car Wash (Lava Jato) corruption probe in 2021 after finding procedural flaws, including bias by the presiding judge at the time, Sergio Moro, not through a political pardon of the kind Caiado is proposing for the January 8 defendants.
During the interview, Caiado said he has never contested election results and described himself as a democrat. To justify amnesty for the rioters, he cited historical precedents of pardons in Brazil, pointing to one granted by then-president Juscelino Kubitschek in the 1950s, and said the Brazilian character is not one of harboring hatred.
Economy and public security
Asked about economic policy, Caiado avoided detailing how he would change the retirement age or handle fiscal adjustment, saying he was in no position to detail the specifics at this point. He said he intends to cap public spending at 50% of GDP, adjusted for inflation, through a constitutional amendment he would send on his first day in office if elected. He also reiterated his public security proposal, dubbed SulPol, a joint police force with Brazil's neighboring countries modeled on Europol, the European Union's police cooperation agency, saying he would seek to coordinate joint arrests with the presidents of bordering nations.