BRAZIL’S former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has vowed that neither legal persecution nor violent intimidation will stop his fight for the presidency after his campaign convoy came under gun fire.

Shots hit two buses in the caravan that has been touring Parana state in southern Brazil yesterday. Officials of Lula’s Workers Party, which has won all presidential elections since 2002 but was removed from power in a constitutional coup in 2016, said Parana was the only state not to have provided a police escort for the campaign.

Lula, as Mr da Silva is universally known, told crowds after the attack that “the powerful can kill one, two or three roses, but they can never stop spring from coming.