With 99.97 percent of the ballots counted, the PT leader defeated the ultra-right-wing politician, who was seeking reelection, 50.9% to 49.1%, a 1.8% lead.
Such result is considered the closest presidential vote in Brazil’s recent history, a show of clear polarization. Lula won’t have an easy job ahead as he will have to struggle with a Congress in the hands of an aggressively radical opposition.
Bolsonaro is the first incumbent Head of State who was unable to get reelected and did not lead the polls in the year prior to the elections, something that did not happen in the successful attempts of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (in 1998), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2006) and Dilma Rousseff (2014).
Lula who held the executive office from 2003 to 2011 reached this Sunday’s runoff after leading the first round of voting on October 2 with 48.43%, while the former military officer got 43.20%. However, none of them had the needed 50% to win.
Rehabilitated in politics since March 2021 and convinced that he can rebuild Brazil, the former mechanic presented his candidacy in May.
He once again sought and won a third term, after serving 580 days of political imprisonment and having his convictions annulled, to make the former Army captain’s appetite for reelection impossible.
For the sixth time, the former union leader contested the presidential elections. He did so in 1989, 1994 and 1998, which he lost, but won in 2002, 2006 and now in 2022.
During his speech in Sao Paulo when he defined his intention, Lula alluded to reconstruction and national unity, as happened in the so-called redemocratization, when the adversaries allied to defeat the military dictatorship (1964-1985).
“It is a very special moment in my life, special for counting on you, for achieving, for the first time, to unite all the progressive political forces around my campaign”, Lula said on that occasion.
He admitted that “we want to return (to power) so that nobody dares to challenge democracy again. And thus fascism returns to the sewer of history, where it should never have come from”, he added.
He said that “we have a dream. We are moved by hope. And there is no greater strength than the hope of a people who know that they can be happy again”, he stressed.
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