Tens of thousands marched in the streets of Brasilia on Wednesday in support of imprisoned former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
On Friday, the U.N. chimed in.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, a panel of independent experts, on Friday said it had requested that the Brazilian government allow imprisoned former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to exercise his political rights as a presidential candidate.
Lula is the candidate for his Workers Party (PT) and leads presidential polls ahead of the October ballot, but is widely expected to be banned from running by an electoral court. He was jailed in April on a corruption conviction.

Today a new poll came out.

Lula, who is serving a 12-year sentence for corruption, garnered 37.7 percent of voting intention in the MDA poll released on Monday, compared to 32.4 percent in its previous May survey.

Barring Lula from running is a set up for an illegitimate government and political violence.
Last week Lula wrote an op-ed in the NY Times describing his imprisonment as a "right-wing coup".

We proved that fighting poverty was a good economic policy.

Then this progress was interrupted. Not through the ballot box, although Brazil has free and fair elections. Instead, President Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed from office for an action that even her opponents admitted was not an impeachable offense. Then, I, too, was sent to prison, after a dubious trial on corruption and money laundering charges.

My imprisonment was the latest phase in a slow-motion coup designed to permanently marginalize progressive forces in Brazil. It is intended to prevent the Workers’ Party from again being elected to the presidency.

The current right-wing government is deeply unpopular.