Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva languishes in jail, but the average voter loves him.

Jailed former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva remains far ahead in a poll published Sunday of candidates in the country’s October presidential election, even though he has been behind bars for two months.
Thirty percent of Brazilians say they will vote for da Silva, who was president between 2003-2010, according to Datafolha pollsters.
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Datafolha said that 21 percent of those polled have no preference for president, while 17 percent will support far-right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro and 10 percent ex-Environment Minister Marina Silva.

Da Silva on Friday received full support from his Workers’ Party, which stated in a letter that they continue to support him as their presidential candidate “to the final consequences.”

No other candidate is even close to Lula, which isn't that surprising since he left office in 2011 with an 83% approval rating. Here's the most amazing part of this story.
These events happened in the past few weeks.

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been absolved of the charge of obstruction of justice by judge Ricardo Leito of the 10th Federal Court of Brasilia.
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Despite being absolved of this instance, Lula remains in prison, where he has been held since April 7, over alleged charges of corruption that investigators have yet to provide evidence for.

The news comes just days after Appeal judge Rogerio Favreto of the Federal Regional Court of the 4th Region based in Porto Alegre accepted a habeas corpus request filed by Lula's Workers' Party and ordered that he be released.

However, the court's president judge Thompson Flores ruled that the case returns to appeal judge Joao Pedro Gebran Neto, therefore, the decision to maintain Lula in prison remains valid.

Can you imagine an extremely popular former president, headed for re-election, sitting in an American jail without any evidence against him?
It would be unimaginable.

Despite his imprisonment, an event that many legal experts and observers attribute to lawfare and a salacious mainstream media campaign ,Lula has topped every 2018 electoral poll conducted by Vox Populi, Ibope, Datafolha, Data Poder 360, Instituto Parana, the National Confederation of Transportation/MDA and Ipsos.

His two terms in office were marked by a slew of social programs, lifting millions of Brazilians out of poverty and removing the country from the United Nations World Hunger Map.

One judge ordered Lula's release before that judge was overruled.
Despite Lula topping every presidential poll for the October general elections, Brazil's largest media news conglomerate O Globo, has decided to exclude him and the Workers' Party, from a series of presidential debates.
Lula is increasingly looking like a political prisoner, and the purpose of keeping him in prison is to keep him off the ballot.

The Brazil letter was spearheaded by @repmarkpocan. Its main argument is that democracy and human rights are being eroded by the attempt to prevent Lula from running, the failure to find Marielle's killers, and the imposition of a new ideology by the installed Temer government pic.twitter.com/HK60dtqF6T

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) 26 July 2018

The increasingly undemocratic process in Brazil has caught the attention of Democrats in Washington.

The letter—spearheaded by Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and signed by 27 other Democratic lawmakers as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—notes that Lula "was imprisoned following a highly questionable and politicized judicial process in which his rights were apparently violated," and that there is "reason to believe that the main objective for his jailing is to prevent him from running in upcoming elections."

"The fight against corruption must not be used to justify the persecution of political opponents or deny them the right to freely participate in elections," the letter declares, echoing calls from other world leaders that Lula be afforded his constitutional right to due process. The former president was imprisoned in April, just weeks after the assassination of Franco in March.

Praising the city councilor as "a courageous advocate for the rights of Afro-Brazilian women and members of the LGBTQ community, and a fearless campaigner against police killings of young men in the favelas," the letter points to "credible evidence" that suggests "members of the state security forces could be implicated in the killing." Although two policemen have been arrested as part of the local probe into Franco's murder, the lawmakers joined calls for an independent international investigation.

More broadly, the letter conveys concerns about the current President Michel Temer and his far-right government's "major cuts to vital health and education programs" as well as "an all-out assault on worker's rights." Sent on the heels of Global Witness's annual report on environmentalists and land defenders killed around the world, it also demands justice for the more than 70 activists who were murdered in Brazil last year. Temer dismissed the watchdog group's findings as "fake news."

If this sounds like a right-wing military coup, it is.