Lula Wins Historic Fourth Term as Brazilian President
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, has staged a dramatic election fightback, defeating his far-right opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, to claim a historic fourth term in power.
With 100% of votes counted the 80-year-old leftist received 4.4m votes more than Bolsonaro, with a 51.79% share to his 45-year-old rival’s 48.21%. However, soon after Brazil’s electoral authority confirmed Lula’s victory, Bolsonaro refused to concede defeat and asked for the results to be annulled.
Lula narrowly lost the first round of the election to Bolsonaro in early October, casting his political future into doubt and plunging progressive Brazilians into three weeks of despair. Never, since the return of democracy in the 1980s, has the first round runner-up won the second vote.
But Lula did precisely that on Sunday, prompting joyous scenes on the streets of São Paulo, where he had been following events, and at the hotel where he was watching the count.
Addressing a packed crowd of ecstatic supporters in a São Paulo conference hall, Lula said: “We are going to change the way that this country is governed … This election was a defeat for denialism … I want to thank God and to thank you, Brazilian men and women of this country … it was democracy that made this happen.”
After the result was confirmed, Alexandre Padilha, Lula’s health minister, said: “This is a huge victory for the Brazilian people who in the second round had the chance to think about what President Lula means for the environment, for the defense of our national health service and our education system and the Brazilian constitution. And the risks that the extreme right candidate entailed.”
“It’s a massive victory – not just for Brazil. It’s also an important signal to the rest of Latin America and to the world,” Padilha added.
The 8o-year-old appears to have made up much of the difference through what his allies had identified as his main opportunity: persuading his voters to turn out. After a record abstention rate of 21.08% in the first round, which disproportionately affected Lula voters because they tend to live further from polling stations, the rate fell to 19.21%.
Speaking during Lula’s victory speech, Bolsonaro said it was “impossible to concede the election result” and that his legal team would seek to have the election annulled.
For Lula, who turns 81 on Tuesday, the victory represents a sensational final chapter in a storied political career that began when he emerged as a union leader in São Paulo’s industrial suburbs in the late 1970s.
After entering politics, the former factory worker who was born in rural poverty made three unsuccessful presidential bids, in 1989, 1994 and 1998, before finally becoming Brazil’s first elected working-class president in 2002.
The Guardian