Back Again: Lula Defeats Bolsonaro In Brazil’s Presidential Election

Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has clinched victory over his right-wing rival Jair Bolsonaro in a tightly contested second round of Brazilian election on Sunday. With over 99% of districts reporting their final results, Lula’s victory was “mathematically defined,” according to the country’s election authority.

Lula’s victory continues a trend of wins by left-wing candidates in Latin America over the past 18 months, most prominently in Chile, Colombia and Peru, as voters punished incumbents that were in charge during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva clinched Brazil’s top job Sunday after besting incumbent Jair Bolsonaro with 50.90% of the vote, figures released by the country’s election authority confirmed.
 
With 99.96% of the ballots counted, Bolsonaro gained 49.10%. The ouster marks the end of a politically heightened period for Brazil as Bolsonaro gained widespread attention for his accelerated destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the government’s failure to effectively implement preventative COVID-19 measures such as masking practices. Brazil documented nearly 700,000 covid-related deaths.
 
In a victory speech, da Silva acknowledged that the challenges ahead would be “immense” but that efforts to rebuild the country would be “necessary … in all its dimensions.”
 
“The majority of the Brazilian people made it very clear that they want more – not less – democracy,” he told supporters. “This is the victory of an immense democratic movement that was formed, above political parties, personal interests and ideologies, so that democracy would win.”

“Bolsonaro lost, but Bolsonarism emerged victorious. The numbers don’t lie,” tweeted São Paulo state lawmaker Erica Malunguinho, a reference to the incumbent’s more than 58 million votes. “Our project must be political and pedagogical.”

There was utter silence from Bolsonaro, his campaign, and his erstwhile-outspoken relatives for hours after the race was called for da Silva.

On October 2, da Silva, who served as president from 2003 to 2010, received over 48% of the vote, which was not enough to claim immediate victory in the first round.

Lula da Silva, who represents Brazil’s Workers’ Party, has focused his campaign on overcoming social inequality and alleviating poverty. Among the measures he proposes are raising taxes on the rich, widening the social safety net, and increasing the minimum wage.

Bolsonaro’s campaign slogan has been ‘God, family, homeland, and liberty’. His vision of Brazil’s future includes privatizing the country’s state-owned oil company, opening the Amazon region to more mining, and easing gun regulations.

The incumbent repeatedly warned during his campaign that he will contest the results if he loses by a small margin, calling into question the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting system.

In the run-up to the showdown, the rivals repeatedly traded insults during debates and campaign events.

During a debate on October 17, Lula called Bolsonaro a “tiny little dictator” and pledged to defend freedom and democracy. The incumbent fired back, calling Lula “a national embarrassment,” due to the corruption scandals that took place when Lula’s Workers’ Party (PT) was in power between 2003 and 2016.

Lula, who governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010, was barred from running for president in 2018 because of a corruption conviction that was later overturned. Read More

Finally, it took just minutes for President Biden to send his congratulations to the Workers’ Party leader on his success in “free, fair, and credible elections.” We wonder if the US president would have been so fast to congratulate Bolsonaro if the vote count was so close but the other way? (In the run-up to the election, Bolsonaro had persistently claimed Brazil’s electronic ballot machines were vulnerable to fraud, leading opponents to fear he was preparing a justification to reject a losing result.)

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