Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftist Workers’ Party leader, narrowly edged out far-right populist incumbent Jair Bolsonaro to win a fiercely fought runoff election for the Brazilian presidency on Sunday.
Da Silva, the 77-year-old known as Lula, swung 50.8 percent of the vote with Bolsonaro breathing down his neck at 49.2 percent, according to the country’s electoral authority, which announced 98.8 percent of votes had been counted.
Bolsonaro led the race for much of the day, but as Lula overtook him with around 70 percent of the vote tallied, car horns began to sound on the streets of downtown São Paulo, with fireworks later being set off as people leaned out of windows above to sing and cheer, according to the Associated Press.
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“Our dream is coming true. We need to be free,” an elated 62-year-old man celebrating on São Paulo’s Paulista Avenue told a reporter for The Guardian. “Brazil was in a very dangerous place and now we are getting back our freedom. The last four years have been horrible.”
“It’s fraud without a doubt. They manipulated the count. The armed forces must intervene,” an aggrieved 50-year-old Bolsonaro supporter in Rio de Janeiro alleged to the outlet, adding that “the population must take to the streets to demand military intervention so that we don’t hand power over to the communists.”
Lula’s triumph comes despite reports of voter suppression, with the Federal Highway Police and contingents of the army allegedly attempting to intimidate would-be Lula voters with roadblocks in the northeast.
That federal road police operations to impede access to voting had been sanctioned by Bolsonaro was seemingly confirmed by his son, Eduardo, who tweeted about “operation ‘flip vote,’’’ accusing his father’s opponents of rigging a “vote buying” operation, and pleading with the public to “let the police work.”
The director of the highway police, Silvinei Vasques, posted a public call for Brazilians to cast their votes for Bolsonaro on Instagram, local newspaper O Globo reported. It was deleted, but caused at least one Lula-allied lawmaker to demand the official’s immediate arrest.
Lula’s party demanded an extension of polling hours at the 560 sites it claimed illegal voter suppression had taken place, particularly in the northeast, but Brazil’s chief electoral authority downplayed the severity of the reports, saying that voters had been delayed—not thwarted—from casting their ballots.
“There was no prejudice to the right to vote and, logically, there will be no postponement of the end of voting…” Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes said, according to The Washington Post. “There is no need to overstate this issue.”
Bolsonaro’s camp, for its part, has repeatedly railed against the supposed weaknesses of the country’s electronic voting machines, leaving critics to fret he might be preparing an escape route by which he could refuse to accept Sunday’s result. Bolsonaro had yet to concede the election by late evening, the AP reported.
A short, pointed statement from U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated Lula on his win “following free, fair, and credible elections,” adding that he looked forward to collaborating with the country’s new leader in the future. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed Biden in a tweet, praising the Brazilian population “for exercising their right to vote and reaffirming the strength of their democracy.”
Brazil’s first-round election was held on Oct. 2, with 11 candidates. The result went to a runoff after no single candidate managed to win more than 50 percent of the vote. Lula, who was expected to clear 50 percent, took in 48.1 percent, while Bolsonaro unexpectedly clawed his way to a 43.5 percent finish.
Lula has stoked his legend as a working-class hero, having risen from shoe-shine boy to metalworker to union leader, eventually being elected Brazil’s president once before in 2003. He served two terms, leaving office in 2010. A corruption scandal yanked him abruptly out of political life, landing him in prison on a nine-and-a-half-year sentence in 2018. He spent 580 days in jail, much of it in isolation, before being freed the next November.
His conviction was nullified last year by Brazil’s Supreme Court, though he was never declared innocent of his money laundering and corruption charges.
“They tried to bury me alive and here I am,” the leftist leader said in beginning his victory speech on Sunday night.
Lula’s incarceration kept him from running in the 2018 presidential election, clearing the way for Bolsonaro’s ascendance. The populist firebrand, now 67, touted conservative Christian values during his term. A professed fanboy of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro was widely criticized for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with some calling his response one of the worst in the world.
Last October, a Brazilian congressional panel recommended Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity” for his alleged deliberate stoking of the pandemic, intentionally inflaming infection numbers in a desperate bid to achieve herd immunity and revive a flailing economy. Around 700,000 Brazilians have died due to COVID-19.
“Seeing Bolsonaro leave is a relief. He is a murderer,” a 50-year-old nurse on Paulista Avenue told the Post. “I worked on the pandemic, he could have prevented thousands of deaths. Today, his defeat is a relief. Today was the answer that the Brazilian people gave him.”
In this year’s knock-down, drag-out campaign, Lula cast himself as the savior of Brazil’s democracy, promising to return its population of 215 million to a more prosperous time.
In his victory speech, Lula vowed to reunite the deeply divided country. “We are going to live new times of peace, love and hope,” he said, adding that he planned to govern for all Brazilians. To applause, he continued: “There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people—a great nation. It is in nobody’s interests to live in a country that is divided and in a constant state of war.”
Among other promises, he has pledged to halt illegal deforestation in the Amazon, and to set up a ministry to oversee Brazil’s Indigenous populations, with an Indigenous individual at its head. (Bolsonaro infamously tore the country’s environmental protections to shreds, pushing to open Indigenous territory to mining interests and, most controversially, once suggesting that he would “eat an Indian, no problem at all.” His campaign attempted to spin this as a sign of “deference” to Indigenous practices.)
Bolsonaro’s defeat makes him the first Brazilian president since the end of the nation’s military dictatorship in 1985 to be voted out of office. Every president who tried for a second term before him—Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula himself, and Dilma Rousseff—won a second term.
“Today we are choosing the kind of Brazil we want, how we want our society to organize. People will decide what kind of life they want,” Lula told reporters from Sao Bernardo do Campo on Sunday morning. “That’s why this is the most important day of my life. I am convinced that Brazilians will vote for a plan under which democracy wins.”
Lula will be sworn in in January.
