With less than two percentage points to spare, Brazil’s leftist leader and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday claimed victory over far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in the country’s tightest election race yet. But the ultra-conservative legacy Bolsonaro is leaving behind could mean that Lula’s biggest challenges still lie ahead as the three-time president takes the reins on January 1.
It proved to be a nail-biter until the end: it wasn’t until 80 percent of the votes had been tallied that Lula began to emerge as the winner of Brazil’s most disputed election on record.
For almost three hours the vote was too close to call, but at around 8pm local time, the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) finally issued a partial result that carried a verdict, showing Lula at 50.9 percent and Bolsonaro at 49.1 percent. With some 2 million votes separating the two, Bolsonaro no longer had a mathematical chance to catch up.
Lula supporters erupted into joy and celebration across the country, but not without trepidation. Since the first round of the elections on October 2, when Bolsonaro largely beat the polls and came out with an unexpectedly strong showing of 43 percent against Lula’s 48 percent, many feared that the incumbent could potentially claim a second straight mandate.
Will Bolsonaro concede defeat?
As in the first round, Lula won the backing of Brazil’s poor states in Nordeste (northeast), while Bolsonaro won the blessings of the rich, including in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo.
But Lula’s victory is a far cry from the tidal wave the country’s polling institutes had predicted, and is likely to leave Brazil even more polarised than it was before the election campaign began – pitting the north against the south, the rich against the poor, and conservative against liberal values.
"Some of the big names within Bolsonarism very quickly recognised Lula’s victory. But we don’t know how the army will react, nor Bolsonaro’s supporters, who can occasionally be violent at the local level,” Anaïs Flechet, a historian who specialises in Brazil at the University of Paris-Saclay, said.
So will Bolsonaro, known by the nickname “Tropical Trump”, follow the example of his north American counterpart in the 2020 US elections? All eyes are now on the former military officer and whether he will concede defeat after spending months alleging - without evidence - that the country’s electronic voting system is plagued by fraud and that the courts, media and other institutions have conspired against him. The fact that Brazil’s 13,000 road network unit (PRF) agents spent election day mounting road blocks and barriers across the country suggests that the next few days could be tense.
Everyone is now waiting for Bolsonaro, who so far has remained silent, to comment on the results.
Democracy vs God?
While Lula on Sunday cast his ballot “for democracy”, Bolsonaro laid his political destiny into the hands of God: “God willing, we will be victorious later today,” he said as he voted.
With roughly half of Brazil’s population of 215 million having bought into Bolsonaro’s ultra-conservative agenda, Lula’s toughest challenge will therefore be to garner support for his more liberal programme.
Lula, who served two presidential terms from 2003 to 2010 and is credited with lifting some 30 million Brazilians out of poverty, is set to face fierce opposition on pretty much all fronts, including on education, healthcare and public service. The former unionist’s negotiation skills will be tested to their utmost as he tackles some of Brazil’s most fractious debates, including abortion and gun rights, as well as the exploitation of the Amazon.
“On January 1, 2023, I will govern for 215 million Brazilians, and not just for those who voted for me,” Lula said at his campaign headquarters. “There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people, one great nation.”
But at 77, Lula is as hated by Brazilians as he is adored. And even though he might have defeated Bolsonaro at the ballot, “Bolsonarism” still came out of the 2022 campaign stronger than ever, with the far-right nabbing the majority in Congress.
Shortly after the election results were announced, Carla Zambelli, a Brazilian lawmaker and a close Bolsonaro ally, wrote on Twitter: “I PROMISE you, I will be the greatest opposition that Lula has ever imagined.”
But Lula’s challenges are not likely to end with tough debates in parliament: When parliament resumes in early February, the Bolsonaro camp will have enough seats to be able to vote through impeachment procedures against him.
Bolsonaro’s four-year mandate was a chaotic one - marked by the disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, in which more than 680,000 Brazilians died, a weak economy and damaging attacks on democratic institutions – but will first and foremost go down in history for its ability to polarise.
More than ever, Bolsonaro divided Brazil into two opposite camps, and Lula’s vow to “unite” them is sure to take the latter to task.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
