FORMER Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva vowed to fight for a left victory in the 2022 election as he addressed cheering supporters on his release from prison at the weekend.

Lula, last year’s election frontrunner until he was barred for a corruption conviction that is widely seen as politically motivated, said supporters should accept Jair Bolsonaro’s election victory despite the “lawfare” deployed to put him behind bars and give Mr Bolsonaro a free run.

But he said Brazilians should work to defeat the “ultra right” at the next election in 2022 and promised: “We are going to do a lot of fighting. Fighting is not one day on, then three months off. Fighting is every day.”

And he condemned US President Donald Trump for interfering in other Latin American countries, saying he should “resolve Americans’ problems and not bother Latin Americans. He wasn’t elected to be the world’s sheriff.”

In a pointed message to Brazil’s political elite, who used a “constitutional coup” against his successor president Dilma Rousseff to remove the Workers Party from power and then reversed its policies, he announced: “I want to say to them: I’m back.”

Lula was released late on Friday following a ruling by Brazil’s Supreme Court that people can only be jailed once they have exhausted all rights of appeal.

His conviction — resting on the testimony of a single convict, whose sentence was reduced in return for it — still stands and he could be imprisoned again if his fight for justice is unsuccessful.