coming increasingly into conflict. Due to allegedly threats received by him and his family, Soares went abroad for a time, becoming a "neoexile". State secretary for Public Security He moved to the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) due to problems with the PDT leader, Leonel Brizola, and was the party's presidential candidate at the October 2002 presidential elections. Garotinho had stepped down nine months earlier to run for president and received 18% of the votes cast. He backed Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round. He helped his wife Rosinha Matheus re-election campaign for governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro. She appointed Garotinho State secretary for Public Security. In August 2003 he left the PSB to join the historical Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement (PMDB), which supported President Lula. The move was seen as an attempt to secure federal funding for his wife's tenure as governor of the State of Rio de Janeiro and to increase Garotinho's chances in a future run for President of Brazil. Hunger strike and later setbacks As the 2006 presidential elections approached, Garotinho, intent on maintaining a candidacy that his party tended to turn down for supporting Lula's bid for reelection, announced on May 1, 2006 a hunger strike, allegedly in protest of what he called unjust treatment by the Brazilian media, after unanswered accusations of illegal campaign funding - mostly about his wife's spending of some R$120 million in contracts with various shadowy NGOs for providing undelivered services to the State's government, which the media saw as a way to divert funds to an electoral campaign. He later stopped his hunger strike, leaving charges unanswered- and his presidential candidacy turned down. The Brazilian press writing Garotinho off as a "clown" and a failing politician parading himself as a caricature of "a crucified Jesus Christ". Many satirists declared that they supported Garotinho going on with the strike "to the very end". On May 29, 2008 the Brazilian Federal Police issued an arrest warrant against Garotinho for "mobstering" (formação de quadrilha) for his association to Rio's former plainsclothes (civil) police chief Alvaro Lins, now a Congressperson for Rio de Janeiro, who was charged with money laundering, criminal association, corruption and facilitating smuggling. According to the federal attorney's office, Garotinho had "offered political support for Lins' group to remain in charge of the civil police." In May 2010, the State (Regional) Electoral Court