Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva, former President and left-wing candidate, has won Brazil?s presidential election, beating incumbent right-wing Jair Bolsonaro.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former President and left-wing candidate, has won Brazil’s presidential election, beating incumbent right-wing Jair Bolsonaro. Lula won 50.9% of the votes to Bolsonaro’s 49.1%, a tight race.

Lula’s election is an astonishing political comeback, as he was elected as Brazil’s president once before, 20 years ago. Bolsonaro was elected in 2018, his four year tenure now coming to an end. 

Tweeting after his victory a picture of the Brazilian flag with the word “Democracia” (democracy), Lula represents a major win for the working class and indigenous people of Brazil. He is a former factory worker who became Brazil’s first working class president two decades ago. The close split of the vote indicates how Brazil’s electorate is divided politically, but the majority have voted to move away from Bolsonaro’s far-right agenda.

Addressing the press after his win, Lula said, “I will govern for 215m Brazilians … and not just for those who voted for me. There are not two Brazils. We are one country, one people – a great nation. It is in nobody’s interests to live in a country that is divided and in a constant state of war.”

Lula, now 77-years old, had lost the Presidential elections in 1994 and 1998, before finally being elected in 2002. He left office in 2010 with an 83% approval rating, governing during the “commodities boom” and lifting living standards for the poor. In 2017, he was implicated in corruption charges and imprisoned for just over 500 days on charges for accepting a bribe. He has always denied the allegations and his conviction was overturned by Brazil’s Supreme Court in 2021, ruling that his right to a fair trial had been compromised. Tweeting on the matter, Lula said that he has gone through a “process of resurrection in Brazilian politics. They tried to bury me alive, and now I'm here to rule the country.” 

“We are going to live new times of peace, love and hope.”

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has yet to concede. At pre-election rallies, he has denounced his rival’s previous time as president, saying Lula is “a thief, the only place for him is jail.” Whilst Lula has prevailed, Bolsonaro’s support base is clearly still large and shouldn’t be dismissed. “Bolsonaro has demonstrated in the election that he has forged a durable rightwing movement, one that blends Brazilian conservatism and nationalism with American-style culture war politics and battles waged over social media”, writes the Financial Times. He had the support of varied factions across Brazil - evangelical churches, the army and police, businesses, the political elite and ordinary social-conservative members of society. He is a populist President garnering a wide socially-conservative base with “deep roots in the country’s agribusiness sector, which now accounts for nearly 30% of gross domestic product, as well as in the more developed south and south-east of Brazil.”

His campaign had been helped by a “better than expected” economic performance, with Brazil’s GDP expected to grow 2.8% this year according to the IMF. This is a rebound from pandemic levels, with an increase to $74bn in foreign investment in the year to September from $50bn according to Brazil’s central bank. Inflation peaked at 12% in April but fell to 7.2% in September.

Bolsonaro was elected to the lower chamber of Congress in 1990, after serving in the military, and was a congressman for 27 years. During this time, he vocally opposed social justice rights and issues such as same-sex marriage and homosexuality, the right to abortion, affirmative action, drug liberalization, and secularism. He announced his first Presidential candidacy under the Social Christian Party, but left in 2018 to rejoin the Social Liberal Party, which has since moved to a more conservative right ideology. He faced corruption charges which were later annulled. He is the first incumbent President to lose re-election in Brazil in the last 30 years. Even though Lula has won the popular vote for President, Bolsonaro’s party look to win a majority in Congress, meaning Lula will have a hard road ahead trying to implement legislation and his vision for Brazil amidst a potentially hostile Congress.

Key Issues

This election focused heavily on religion, nationalism and culture, as well as the key issues of poverty, the environment and the fallout of COVID. Nearly 700,000 Brazilians died of COVID in Brazil. A report by a Brazilian Senate committee in October 2021 set out how many of those deaths could have been prevented. The reported concluded that Bolsonaro’s ultimate goal was “rapid contagion so that Brazil would reach herd immunity.” 

“President Jair Bolsonaro spread false information about Covid-19, opposed social distancing, refused to wear masks, and routinely shook hands with crowds of supporters,” it reads, “He not only refused to follow World Health Organisation recommendations to protect public health, but he sought to block Congress and local officials from following guidelines. For instance, in July 2020, he vetoed legal provisions to make mask wearing mandatory in churches and in Brazil’s overcrowded prisons.”

It adds more on how Bolsonaro’s administration sent drugs that have no proven effect against the virus to Indigenious communities in the face of an oxygen shortage, as well as not responding to several offers of vaccines from the Butantan Institute (a research centre owned by the São Paulo state government). The report also recommended criminal charges against Bolsonaro and other officials as well as his impeachment, which did not come to fruition, but now a year later he is out of the top office.

Bolsonaro’s tenure also saw the dismantling of protections of the Amazon rainforest. Under his office, deforestation hit the highest rate in 15 years, more than two billion trees have been cut down or burned. That averages to 15 trees every second, according to two of Brazil’s most prestigious forest research groups, Imazon and MapBiomass. The knock on effects - to animal habits, CO2 absorption, the lives of Amazonian communities, the overall planet’s health - is dangerous. One of Brazil’s leading climate scientists, Carlos Nobre, warned the tipping point is likely to be reached when the Amazon is between 20-25% cleared. Today, because of Bolsonaro’s policies, the level is estimated between 17-20%. If Bolsonaro had won this election, it could have seen the Amazon rainforest stripped to a level it cannot come back from, pushing the world climate crisis into a state of no return. 

September was the worst month of forest fires since 2010 as “ land grabbers and farmers rushed to take advantage of the permissive regulation under Bolsonaro before a possible change of power,” writes TIME. “September also saw seven indigenous people murdered in different parts of Brazil, another horrendougly high toll that was in keeping with a central objective of this extreme-rightist government to remove obstacles to the exploitation of indigenous lands and nature reserves.” Many indigenous communities and climate defenders have been targeted for their outcry or their land, threatened by businessmen and have reportedly had a price put on their head. During Lula’s first time in office, deforestation fell by 80%. A recent analysis by Carbon Brief shows that his victory in 2022 could help bring deforestation down by 89% by the end of the decade, affirming how crucial the election was for the climate.

Brazil also has some of the worst levels of inequality. The country is one of the world’s biggest food producers, but the UN Hunger Map categorises it as a country where the population faces a chronic lack of food. An estimated 4.1% of Brazil’s population are under this category. Over 61 million Brazillians live in some type of food insecurity, according to a Food and Agriculture Organization survey.. A national report called Look At The Hunger by The Brazilian Network of Research on Sovereignty and Food and Nutritional Security, Oxfam Brazil and other organisations, collected data between November 2021 and April 2022. It describes a worrying situation where Brazil is facing a setback resembling the 1990s when hunger was rife. According to the study, 15.5 percent (33.1 million people) of the population are facing serious food insecurity. This is up from 9%, with 14 million new Brazilians in a situation of hunger in just over a year. It states:

“The continued dismantling of public policies , the worsening of the economic crisis, the increase in social inequalities and the second year of the Covid-19 pandemic kept more than half (58.7%) of the Brazilian population in food insecurity.”

Between 2004 and 2013 - most of which was Lula’s tenure - policies to reduce poverty were implemented and hunger decreased less than half the initial rate, from 9.5% to 4.2%.

Reactions have been coming in across the world from party leaders. US President Joe Biden tweeted: “I send my congratulations to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his election to be the next president of Brazil following free, fair, and credible elections. I look forward to working together to continue the cooperation between our two countries in the months and years ahead.”

Russian President Vladmir Putin offered his “sincerest congratulations”, and new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak tweeted his congratulations, adding “I look forward to working together on the issues that matter to the UK and Brazil, from growing the global economy to protecting the planet’s natural resources and promoting democratic values.” Other messages of congratulations with hopes of strengthening ties have come from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

His win is celebrated by many on the left, with congratulatory messages from Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn and former Bolivian President Evo Morales. With Lula back in office, many hope that such policies may be implemented once more. Reducing poverty and the fallout from COVID and protecting Brazil’s rainforests are certainly key areas for the new government. But there will also be the challenge of how to govern such a divided population and Bolsonaro’s supporter base. Lula’s inauguration is set for 1 January 2023.

(Sources: The Guardian, Human Rights Watch, The Financial Times, TIME, Global Voices, BBC News, Twitter)