Ronaldo Caiado, the presidential candidate for the PSD party, was interviewed on Tuesday (25) by Brazil's largest broadcaster, Globo, in a sit-down conducted by journalists Renata Vasconcellos and César Tralli at the network's Rio de Janeiro studios. The interview is part of a series featuring the six candidates leading a mid-August poll by the Quaest institute, and was the first to air after the flagship evening newscast rather than during it.
According to BBC News Brasil, Caiado said he would send Congress a bill granting amnesty to everyone convicted over the January 8, 2023 riots, when supporters of former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed and vandalized Brazil's Congress, Supreme Court and presidential palace after his election defeat. Caiado said the measure would pacify the country and end what he called an endless cycle of revenge. To justify the proposal, he compared it to the Supreme Court's 2021 decision annulling President Lula's corruption convictions from the Car Wash (Lava Jato) probe, claiming the court had also granted Lula an amnesty.
Fact-check flags error in comparison to Lula's case
G1's fact-checking unit, Fato ou Fake, rated that claim false. In March 2021 the Supreme Court threw out four cases against Lula because it found the Curitiba federal court that tried him, then overseen by judge Sergio Moro, was not the proper venue. Justice Edson Fachin, who wrote the ruling, did not assess the merits of the accusations or declare Lula innocent: the decision addressed a procedural flaw and restored his political rights. That is legally distinct from amnesty, defined by the Senate's own glossary as a pardon granted by law, a power that belongs exclusively to Congress, not the judiciary.
Caiado also proposed creating a joint South American police force, called Sulpol in his platform and modeled on Europe's Europol, that would let officers from neighboring countries operate inside Brazil to fight smuggling, money laundering, arms and drug trafficking, with Brazilian police granted the same access abroad. Brazil is the Disneyland of drug trafficking, he said, according to the BBC. Asked whether he would authorize the United States to carry out operations on Brazilian soil, a question tied to Washington's recent announcement of anti-drug trafficking measures in Latin America, Caiado said he saw no need for that, arguing the region's ten countries should handle the problem themselves.
On public safety, Caiado said 60 million Brazilians are today enslaved by drug trafficking. G1 rated the claim true with caveats: a survey by the Brazilian Forum on Public Security with pollster Datafolha, published in May, found 68 million Brazilians (41% of the population) perceive criminal groups tied to trafficking or militias operating in their neighborhoods, though only 12% of respondents said they had actually been forced to pay for services offered by criminals. A separate claim that 38 million voters skipped the last presidential election was rated inaccurate: Superior Electoral Court data show 32.7 million abstentions in the 2022 first round and 32.1 million in the runoff.
Caiado additionally claimed 80% of Brazilians are burdened by debt, a figure G1 confirmed using data from the National Confederation of Commerce (CNC): in July, 82% of Brazilian households were in debt, the highest level in the survey's history. During the interview, Caiado also said he wants to revisit the tax reform designed by economist Bernard Appy, proposing changes to ease the burden on self-employed workers and small entrepreneurs, and said he would pursue a pension overhaul without specifying whether he would raise the minimum retirement age. Globo's interview series continues in coming days with candidates Renan Santos (Missão), Lula (PT), Flávio Bolsonaro (PL) and Augusto Cury (Avante).