Fernando Haddad, the Workers' Party (PT) candidate for governor of São Paulo, Brazil's most populous and richest state, faced a live-streamed sabatina, a Q&A interview with journalists, held by UOL and the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo on Monday (24). The former finance minister promised to make the state Military Police's body cameras record without interruption, ruled out re-nationalizing services privatized under the current administration and said police lethality has doubled under Governor Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicanos), who is seeking re-election.
Body cameras and police lethality
According to G1, Haddad said: "I will put the body cameras to work nonstop. I think he bought the cameras, which was a good thing, but this business of the guy switching it off whenever he wants, that will not do." The model now in place was changed after an agreement approved by the Supreme Court (STF) in May 2025 and does not require continuous recording: officers can switch the devices on manually or have them triggered remotely by the police operations center. Social organizations and human rights groups criticize the arrangement because incidents can go unfilmed when no one activates the camera.
Haddad also said police lethality doubled under Tarcísio and criticized the lack of investment in intelligence, technology and data analysis. "That will not happen with police reports filed the way they are, bureaucratized, without working the data to guide street patrols," he said. According to the candidate, fewer than 5% of crimes committed in the state lead to the identification of perpetrators and a conviction.
Re-nationalization and contracts
Asked about the privatizations pushed through by Tarcísio, Haddad said he will not re-nationalize concessions, Poder360 reported. "Re-nationalizing is very complicated, because the contracts are so tightly structured that it sometimes costs more to re-nationalize than to impose fairer rules for consumers on the concessionaire," he said, a position UOL summed up in its headline as "Better to change the manager." Instead, the candidate promised a fine-tooth review of current contracts and said Tarcísio, as Jair Bolsonaro's infrastructure minister from 2019 to 2022, "signed contracts harmful to the National Treasury." He cited a review of railway concession contracts carried out with the federal audit court and said his team at the Finance Ministry identified R$ 4 billion owed by mining giant Vale, money that, according to him, has been paid.
Cracolândia and the Federal Police
On Cracolândia, the open-air crack cocaine scene in downtown São Paulo, Haddad rejected the state and city governments' claim that the problem is over. "I invite people to take a walk through the Brás district after 8 or 9 p.m. to see whether Cracolândia has ended," he said, also citing clusters of users in Itaquera and along the Tietê and Pinheiros expressways. He defended a public health approach, with treatment, shelter and paths back to work, along the lines of De Braços Abertos (With Open Arms), a harm reduction program he created in 2014 as mayor of the city of São Paulo, and proposed splitting tasks: the state would fight trafficking while city halls treat addicts.
Haddad also addressed suspicions that sealed investigation data were leaked in the case involving Lulinha, President Lula's eldest son. He said he trusts the Federal Police as an institution, but argued Brazilians cannot be naive enough to think that "polarization does not run through institutions," and praised Supreme Court Justice André Mendonça for ordering an inquiry into the leaks. Free campaign advertising in São Paulo starts on Friday (28); according to the state electoral court, Tarcísio will get 6 minutes and 20 seconds of daily radio and TV time, against 2 minutes and 40 seconds for Haddad, G1 reported.