BRASÍLIA – Voters in Brazil on Sunday ousted President Jair Bolsonaro after just one term and elected former leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to replace him, election officials said, a rebuke. to Bolsonaro’s far-right movement and his split for four years. office.
Victory completes a great political revival for Mr. da Silva – from the presidency to prison and back – that used to seem inconceivable. It also ended Bolsonaro’s tumultuous period as the region’s most powerful leader. This is the first time a sitting president has not won re-election in the 34 years of Brazil’s modern democracy.
For many years, he has attracted global attention for his policies increase destruction speed of the Amazon rainforest and aggravate the pandemickilled nearly 700,000 people in Brazil, and became a major international figure of the right for his devastating attacks on the Brazilian left, the media and democratic institutions.
More recently, his efforts to sabotage Brazil’s electoral system has attracted particular interest at home and abroad, as well as worldwide attention for Sunday’s vote as a vital test of one of the world’s largest democracies.
Without proof, Mr. Bolsonaro criticized country’s electronic voting machine rife with fraud and hints that he may not accept losses, like former President Donald J. Trump. Many of his supporters have vowed to take to the streets at his command.
However, within hours of the race’s start, far-right lawmakers, conservative pundits and many Bolsonaro supporters recognized da Silva’s victory. As of 11 p.m. local time, Mr Bolsonaro had not yet spoken publicly.
It is not all quiet. According to videos posted on social media and local news reports, truckers in the heart of Brazil’s central agricultural region set off fires and tried to block a major highway vital to the agricultural industry. Karma.
Mr da Silva won by the narrowest margin in that same period, signaling the deep divisions he will face as president. He won 50.90 percent of the vote, compared with Mr. Bolsonaro’s 49.10 percent, with 99.97 percent of the vote counted Sunday night.
“I will run for the 215 million Brazilians, and not just for those who voted for me,” Mr da Silva said in his victory speech on Sunday night, read from the pages of his newlywed wife. , whom he married this year holds. “There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people, one great nation.”
Mr. da Silva, 77, a former metalworker and union leader with a 5th grade education, led Brazil during the boom of the first decade of this century, leaving office at a rate Agree 80%.
But years after he left office, authorities revealed a broad government payback scheme that had flourished during his rule. He was convicted of corruption and served 580 days in prison.
Last year, the Supreme Court upheld those convictions, ruling that the judge in his cases was biased, even though he was never cleared of any wrongdoing. However, he was still allowed to run for president and voters rallied after the man known simply as “Lula”.
The scandal made him a flawed candidate, and a sizable portion of Brazilians still consider Mr. da Silva to be corrupt. But strong opposition to Mr Bolsonaro and his far-right movement was enough to return Mr da Silva to the presidency.
“He is not the solution to every problem. But he is our only hope,” said Stefane Silva de Jesus, a 30-year-old librarian, after she voted for Mr. da Silva in Rio de Janeiro.
Mr. da Silva’s victory pushed Brazil back to the left, prolonging a streak of leftist victories across Latin America fueled by a wave of anti-incumbent backlash. Six of the region’s seven largest countries have now elected leftist leaders since 2018.
As a leftist fighter who for decades has been a champion of the poor, Mr da Silva is now facing significant challenges. Brazil faces environmental threats, rising hunger, a fragmented economy and a deeply divided population.
His focus with voters is that he will revive the working class, which he says has been neglected for four years under Mr. Bolsonaro. In his speech on Sunday, he promised to fight against discrimination and for equality.
“It’s the only way we can build a country for all, an egalitarian Brazil that prioritizes those who need it most,” he said. “A Brazil with peace, democracy and opportunity.”
However, Mr. da Silva’s specific plans are vague.
His speech revolved around expanding services for the poor, including more social welfare payments, higher minimum wages, and programs to provide food and housing to more people. . To pay the price, he said, he would raise taxes on the rich but also simply increase government spending.
How much he will be able to accomplish remains unclear.
Bolsonaro’s far-right party holds the most seats in the National Assembly and a powerful central block control both the House of Representatives and the Senate; the country faces worse economic conditions than during Mr. da Silva’s first rule; and the interventionist policies of Mr. da Silva’s successor as president put Brazil into a recession in 2014 but it has not been fully recovered yet.
However, his election will most likely be good news for the health of the Amazon rainforest, which is crucial in the fight against climate change. Mr. Bolsonaro supports the forest resource extraction industries while cutting funding and staffing for agencies tasked with forest protection. As a result, deforestation skyrocketed during his rule.
Mr. da Silva has much better track record in protecting forests and reducing deforestation as president. He has campaigned on a promise to eliminate illegal logging and logging and says he will push farmers to use areas of forest that have been cleared.
On Sunday, voting at the polling stations went smoothly – but for many voters, voting did not take place. Across Brazil, federal highway agents stopped hundreds of buses carrying voters to the polls and questioned residents, including in areas largely backing da Silva.
The chief election officer said his agency’s initial investigation found the stops had delayed the bus, but they all still made it to the scheduled polling stations. No voters were blocked from casting their ballots, he said.
Mr. da Silva’s victory was thanks in part to a broad coalition, from communists to centrists, as Brazilian voters sought stability after Bolsonaro’s tumultuous tenure, which was supported marked with conflict with the courtone pandemic that kill more people than anywhere but the United States, and frequent attacks on the nation’s leftists, media, academics, medical professionals, and democratic institutions.
Mr. Bolsonaro, 67, has faced numerous investigations in the Supreme Court and in Congress, including claims of hacking the electoral system, his handling of the pandemic and the possibility of engaging in disinformation activities.
So far, he has avoided any consequences from those queries, in part because of his immunity as president. After he leaves office on January 1, those investigations may come to fruition.
Bolsonaro has also had much of his run as president protected from government transparency laws because his administration has effectively classified many records over 100 years, including status quo. his vaccine.
Mr. da Silva vowed to declassify those files when he was president. “When we lift the rug, you see the rot underneath,” he said at Friday’s debate.
Last year, Mr. Bolsonaro told supporters that the election had only three outcomes: He won, he was killed or he was arrested. Then he added, “Tell the bastards I’ll never get caught.”
That kind of rhetoric raises alarms that Mr Bolsonaro will not accept the outcome. He was one of the last world leaders to recognize President Biden’s victory in 2020, echoing Mr Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, including only two days ahead of his first meeting with Mr Biden earlier this year.
On Sunday, federal auditors examined 601 polling stations to verify that their votes were accurately reflected in the national tally. The audit found no errors.
There has been no credible evidence of fraud in Brazilian electronic voting machines since they were introduced in 1996. However, Mr. Bolsonaro has questioned the system for years.
Earlier this year, his criticisms of the system took on new gravity when the Brazilian army got involved. Leaders of the armed forces pushed election officials to change the system, upsetting a country that suffered a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
But in the end military and election officials agree to change some tests of voting machines on Election Day, and military leaders have since suggested they are satisfied with the system’s security.
In recent weeks, military leaders have also privately said they would not support any attempt by Mr Bolsonaro to challenge the outcome.
In the week before the election, Mr. Bolsonaro largely stopped talking about voting machines and started claiming other types of fraud. His campaign said that many radio stations were broadcasting more ads from Mr da Silva, which would have violated electoral law. But the evidence the campaign presented was incomplete and flawed, and Brazil’s election chief was quick to dismiss the lawsuit.
On Friday, in an interview after the final debate, Mr Bolsonaro was asked directly whether he would accept the outcome of the vote, regardless of the outcome.
“There is no doubt about it,” he said. “Whoever gets more votes, take it. That’s democracy.”
Flávia Milhorance and Ana Ionova contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro, André Spigariol from Brasília and Laís Martins from São Paulo.
