Brasília, Brazil: Luis Inacio Lula da Silva may be in jail but his Workers' Party is still backing him to contest presidential elections against the odds, a high-risk strategy that demonstrates the lack of real options.
If there are debates over keeping him on as the party's candidate in October's election, they remain out of view for now.
Publicly at least, the Workers' Party (PT) has stepped up displays of unconditional support for its incarcerated co-founder.
The party moved headquarters from Sao Paulo to the southern city of Curitiba, where Lula was jailed on April 7 after losing his appeal against a corruption conviction.
And only this week, more than 60 Workers' Party MPs symbolically added "Lula" to their names for official Congress documents and the electronic voting board in a show of solidarity.
The idea is to keep the 72-year-old front and center of the electorate ahead of the election even while he cools his heels in prison, with judges set to rule on the legality of keeping him there. Even then, analysts believe it likely an elections tribunal will ban him from contesting the polls.
"We don't have a Plan B," conceded former president Dilma Rousseff this week, adding that the PT will "battle every legal authority so that Lula will be a candidate," for an election he is still favorite to win.
Despite the threat of Brazil's electoral court disqualifying Lula, "it is very difficult for the party not to capitalize on such a leader," said Debora Messenberg, a political sociologist and lecturer at the University of Brasilia.
According to Lincoln Secco, who wrote a history of the Workers' Party, "Lula and the PT are inseparable."
"The party has adopted the correct strategy: keep Lula as a candidate, even in prison. How could one not consider Lula as a political prisoner," said Secco, a historian at the University of Sao Paulo. "Lula did not have a fair trial."
However, political scientist Paulo Moura says that, "in a way, the PT is a hostage to Lula."
"Without a prospect of Lula as a candidate, the PT's base will disintegrate. It's a dead end because Lula will not be able to campaign in prison."
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