Photo by Nelson Almeida / AFP
After a heated and controversial campaign, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been elected as Brazil’s new president. In a runoff vote against right-wing candidate Jair Bolsonaro, da Silva won by a slim margin, securing 50.9% of the vote to the incumbents’ 49.1% with more than 99% tallied votes. This was the country’s closest election in three decades. This victory is a significant rebuke to Bolsonaro and his far-right agenda.
It’s a return to power for Lula, 77, whose imprisonment over a corruption scandal prevented him from the elections in 2018. He last served as president from 2003 to 2010 and has a grandiose agenda of unifying the country.
Lula is inheriting a highly divided nation similar to U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, without the narrative of a stolen election just yet with Bolsonaro yet to concede as of the time of this writing. The Brazillian election authority said da Silva’s victory was a mathematical certainty.
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