With the return of left-wing ex-president Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva (77) as Brazil’s next leader, a new era is dawning for the country that has been turning right in recent years.
However, it will not be easy for Lula, who also ruled between 2003 and 2010 and then put Brazil on the map as an emerging regional superpower. He defeated incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro on Sunday in the second round of elections with 50.9 percent of the vote. A difference of less than two percentage points, which illustrated how much Latin America’s largest country has split into two camps after a fierce election campaign.
Lula’s win shows that a majority of Brazilians don’t just want a break with Bolsonaro’s hard-right policies of the past four years. It is also a boost for democratic institutions like the Supreme Court and Congress, which have been systematically attacked by the president and his supporters. In his first speech, Lula said that as far as he is concerned there is only one Brazil, making a first attempt to dampen polarization in the country by reaching out to Bolsonaro’s voters.
first hand
Election night, like the entire campaign, was tense until the last moment on Sunday. When the votes came in, the two rivals were chasing each other for a long time. Bolsonaro led the way for a long time, but when the results came in from the northeastern states, where the social-democratic Workers’ Party (PT) traditionally has strong supporters, the result tilted in Lula’s favor.
After media announced Lula as the intended winner, a party erupted among his supporters that went on well into the night. Bolsonaro was nowhere to be seen and is said to have retired to his home with his family, including his three sons who are also in politics.
However, some of Bolsonaro’s powerful allies responded. They labeled Lula’s win as “a result of democracy,” giving the impression that the Bolsonaro camp at least recognizes the result.
The big question is whether the president will do that during Monday. He has repeatedly said there are only three options for him after this election: captivity, death, or victory. He has long sowed doubts about the electronic voting system, which he says is unreliable. Last week, his son Eduardo stated that there would almost certainly be fraud and that it would be better to postpone the polls.
It is also uncertain whether Bolsonaro’s supporters, who have been told for years that Lula is “a communist danger” and “a criminal”, will accept the result. There is a fear that, just like after Trump’s loss at the end of 2020, Brazil will wait its own variant of the Capitol storming. All the more so because the transfer of power will take two months: Lula’s inauguration is not until January 1, 2023.
One reason for Bolsonaro to fight to the end is that after his loss, he will face a higher risk of prosecution once he is president. Several charges and investigations are pending against him, among other things, for alleged corruption and also for his corona policy in which almost seven hundred thousand people died and were cheated in the purchase of vaccines.
Big Challenges
His life story as a poor shoe shiner, who learned to read and write only as a teenager and then was elected the first left-wing president in 2002 through a union career, remains special. Lula has promised Brazilians in the campaign that he will return the country to the glory years of his previous presidency, from 2003 to 2010.
But times are different now. Brazil can no longer live on the great commodity boom that then provided great wealth. Lula faces the big challenge of getting the stalled economy back on its feet. Around 33 million Brazilians are starving and the country is in dire straits due to the mismanagement during the pandemic.
But above all, Lula will have to deal with a Congress, where the right is extremely strong. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL) became the largest in both chambers at the beginning of this month, in the first round of elections, and many bolsonaristas also came to power at state level.
At the same time, Lula has shown earlier in his political career that he is a star at forging alliances. Whether he can repeat that trick from his first installments is the big question. Lula still clings to the major corruption scandal Lava Jato, in which leaders of his PT and other political parties became involved in the 1990s.
Lula was convicted in 2018, which prevented him from running in the election that year – and Bolsonaro came to power. However, his conviction later turned out to be partly due to the fact that the then investigating judge (and Bolsonaro’s later minister of justice) Sergio Moro had taken a biased attitude.
After more than a year and a half, Lula was released after the Supreme Court overturned his convictions. This paved the way to participate in these elections. For that reason alone, this win is also sweet revenge for Lula. “I’m back and Brazil is back, also on the international stage,” Lula shouted when he addressed hundreds of thousands of people after the results in the business city of São Paulo on Sunday evening.
trade agreement
After the results, international congratulations poured in from, among others, US President Biden, French President Macron and various Latin American leaders.
In Europe, people quietly hoped for a victory for Lula, because with him at the helm an important trade agreement with the South American country bloc Mercosur can still be fully ratified. EU countries lingered on this because they did not trust Bolsonaro’s policy towards the Amazon. Lula has pledged to tackle the deforestation of the rainforest.
With Lula’s return, all major economies in Latin America will soon be run by left-wing leaders, just as they were during Lula’s first two terms. Still, the situation is different today than it was twenty years ago: Lula chose the center-right Geraldo Alckmin as vice presidential candidate. This ex-governor of São Paulo is well with the business and industrial elite.
With Alckmin by his side – and with a right-wing supremacy in Congress – Lula will not be too left-wing, it is expected. The conservative forces that Bolsonaro has unleashed in Brazil are not to be underestimated. Not in the least, because Bolsonaro (67) – after Lula’s example – can also start working on a possible return in 2026 after this defeat.