Brazil’s voters elected Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as the next president on Sunday.
He defeated President Jair Bolsonaro, who was running for reelection. Da Silva, who ruled the country for two terms before, will do so again for the third time in 2023.
Da Silva won with 50.9% of the votes against 49.1% for Bolsonaro — a difference of only two million votes. It was the closest presidential race in Brazil’s history. It is also the first time a president running for reelection lost.
Bolsonaro, a far-right president, hinted in the last few months he would not accept the results if he didn’t consider them “fair.” It was a strategy inspired by former President Donald Trump, who claims without evidence that the 2020 U.S. elections were rigged. Trump had endorsed Bolsonaro.
More than 15 hours after the results were announced by local officials, Bolsonaro had yet not conceded to his opponent. His allies, however, are pressing him to do so quickly, according to the local media.
President Joe Biden congratulated the next Brazilian president saying, “I look forward to working together to continue the cooperation between our two countries.”
In his victory speech, Da Silva vowed to reunite the country and said that “there are no such thing as two Brazils.”
His election is the peak moment of a remarkable political comeback after many turbulent years. After leaving the office in 2010 and picking his successor Dilma Rousseff, Da Silva was investigated and convicted for corruption.
He was arrested in 2018 and spent more than 500 days in jail until the Supreme Court overruled his conviction based on procedural flaws.
