Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva wins the first round of Brazil’s presidential elections.
Photo: dpa/Marcelo Chello
Rio de Janeiro. The left-wing top candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the first round of the presidential elections in Brazil. As the Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) announced on its website on Sunday evening (local time), Lula won 47.97 percent, while the far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro won 43.6 percent. The two candidates will therefore compete against each other in a run-off election on October 30th.
“We will have to convince Brazilian society of our proposals,” Lula told supporters in Sao Paulo. The fight now goes on “until the final victory, that’s our motto,” said the 76-year-old ex-president, who ruled Brazil from 2003 to 2010. He now promised “more trips, more appearances” to win over more Brazilians. Adversary Bolsonaro was confident of victory despite the defeat in the first round of the election. “We have defeated the lie,” declared the right-wing politician after the announcement of the election results, which deviated significantly from the predictions of the opinion research institute Datafolha.
Datafolha polls saw challenger Lula with 50 percent of the votes in the first round and thus a much larger lead over incumbent Bolsonaro. According to Datafolha, he was 36 percent behind Lula, but now performed far better than expected.
Many of his followers associate Lula with good times in Brazil, when the economy was booming due to high commodity prices and the government lifted millions of people out of abject poverty with the help of social programs. For his opponents, however, Lula is responsible for corruption and nepotism.
The election has divided Latin America’s largest economy. Lula called Bolsonaro a genocide because of his hesitant corona policy, and Bolsonaro called his opponent a thief after his conviction for corruption.
Bolsonaro has previously announced several times that he would contest the election result if he lost. Many people fear a Brazilian version of the unrest that shook the US after Bolsonaro’s political role model Donald Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat. Agencies/n
