DC Edit | Brazil’s Lula Surprises In Runoff
How Lula turned around his fortunes in the polls by winning 10.4 million votes more than in the first round is a remarkable story, though the loser contends that keeping the polling open for an additional two hours to cope with transport delays and heavy rains may have helped swing the result
Brazil’s leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, staged a dramatic comeback to beat his far-right rival, senator Flavio Bolsonaro, in the runoff polls. It was a riposte not only for the US President Donald Trump who had backed the Bolsonaro father-son duo but also a stunning change from the sweep of the far-right in Latin America where seven nations had voted for the right in polls in the last two years.
Flavio, eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro — now imprisoned at home in a 27-year prison term for attempting a coup against the regime and plotting to kill the president — refused to accept the verdict that narrowly favoured the incumbent, thus exposing the deep divisions within Brazil where the Liberal party opposes Mr Lula’s left-wing Workers’ Party.
How Lula turned around his fortunes in the polls by winning 10.4 million votes more than in the first round is a remarkable story, though the loser contends that keeping the polling open for an additional two hours to cope with transport delays and heavy rains may have helped swing the result.
Lula declared that Brazil, Latin America’s largest nation and economy, was no one’s backyard, in a stinging rebuke to Mr Trump who has been supporting the far-right everywhere, including in Serbia in Europe where a student movement upset the applecart of authoritarian president Aleksandar Vucic who immediately blamed European countries and the American deep state which he says opposes Trump.
The challenges ahead are many for Lula who may sustain Brazil’s independent foreign policies, but who must contend with economic problems at home where endemic violence by organised crime, a cost-of-living crisis and deep household debt compounding pressures on public finances while facing a parliament nearly half full of Opposition MPs.
Brazilian sovereignty was Mr Lula’s battle cry and it seemed to resonate enough with voters who may otherwise have been willing to join the universal cry for change, but maybe not of the Bolsonaro kind in whose previous term the existence of the Amazon rainforest, one of the world’s most wondrous natural resources, was threatened with extinction.
People with an abiding faith in democracy may have heaved a sigh of relief that Brazil has been spared from the push to the far-right much as they would have been pleased to see a party led by students upset the long-standing Serbian president who, incidentally, was supported by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.