SAO PAULO, Brazil — Brazilian
president-elect
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for “peace and unity” after
narrowly winning a divisive runoff election Sunday, capping a remarkable
political comeback by defeating rightwing incumbent Jair Bolsonaro.
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The victory marks a stunning turnaround for the
charismatic but tarnished leftist heavyweight, who left office in 2010 as the
most popular president in Brazilian history, fell into disgrace when he was
imprisoned for 18 months on since-quashed corruption charges, and now returns
for an unprecedented third term at age 77.
All eyes will now be on how Bolsonaro and his
supporters react to the result after months of alleging — without evidence —
that
Brazil’s electronic voting system is plagued by fraud and that the courts,
media and other institutions had conspired against his far-right movement.
“This country needs peace and unity,” Lula said to
loud cheers in a victory speech in Sao Paulo.
“The challenge is immense,” he said of the job
ahead, citing a hunger crisis, the economy, bitter political division and
deforestation in the Amazon.
He later addressed a tightly packed crowd of
hundreds of thousands of supporters clad in Workers’ Party red who flooded the
city center, vowing: “Democracy is back.”
‘He hasn’t called yet’
Bolsonaro, 67, was silent in the hours after the result was declared.
“Anywhere in the
world, the losing president would already have called to admit defeat. He
hasn’t called yet, I don’t know if he will call and concede,” Lula told the
massive crowd.
Some Bolsonaro
supporters, gathered in the capital Brasilia, refused to accept the results.
Electoral
officials declared the election for Lula, who had 50.9 percent of the vote to
49.1 percent for Bolsonaro with more than 99.9 percent of polling stations
reporting, in the closest race since Brazil returned to democracy after its
1964–1985 dictatorship.
Bolsonaro
becomes the first incumbent president not to win re-election in the
post-dictatorship era.
With no word
from Bolsonaro, some of his key allies appeared in public to accept the
results. They included the speaker of the lower house of Congress, Arthur Lira,
who said it was time to “extend a hand to our adversaries, debate, build
bridges”.
‘Restore peace’
Congratulations for Lula poured in from US President
Joe Biden, Russian
President Vladimir Putin, France’s Emmanuel Macron, India’s Narendra Modi,
Britain’s Rishi Sunak, and Spain’s Pedro Sanchez, as well as leaders from
across Latin America.
The EU’s chief
diplomat, Josep Borrell, joined the international well-wishers, as did China’s
foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian and German Foreign Minister Annalena
Baerbock.
Lula supporters
around the country erupted into celebration Sunday evening.
In Brasilia, the
tearful crowd of Bolsonaro supporters — outfitted in green and yellow, the
colors of Brazil’s flag which the ex-army captain has adopted as his own — fell
to their knees to pray.
Bolsonaro surged
to victory four years ago on a wave of outrage with politics as usual, but came
under fire for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic — which left more than
680,000 dead in Brazil — as well as a weak economy, his polarizing style, and
attacks on democratic institutions.
Regardless of
how the incumbent reacts, Lula will face huge challenges when he is inaugurated
on January 1.
Lula inherits a
deeply divided country, with a hugely difficult global economic situation that
looks nothing like the commodities “super-cycle” that allowed him to lead Latin
America’s biggest economy through a watershed boom in the 2000s.
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