São Bernardo do Campo (Brazil) (AFP) – Ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s polarizing election frontrunner and leftist icon, was negotiating his surrender after dramatically skipping a first deadline Friday to start his 12-year prison sentence for corruption. Holed up with thousands of cheering supporters in the metalworkers’ union building in his hometown of Sao Bernardo do Campo, near Sao Paulo, the 72-year-old let the 5:00 pm (2000 GMT) deadline pass without public comment. This raised the temperature in the standoff between the leftist former two-term president and Judge Sergio Moro, who heads the mammoth “Car Wash” anti-graft probe and who ordered Lula’s imprisonment.
