Brazil’s far-right incumbent Balsonero loses presidential election to Da Silva

SAO PAULO — Brazil’s electoral authority said Sunday that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the leftist Worker’s Party defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro to become the country’s next president.

With 98.8% of the votes tallied in the runoff vote, da Silva had 50.8% and Bolsonaro 49.2%, and the election authority said da Silva’s victory was a mathematical certainty.

Da Silva — the country’s former president from 2003-2010 — has promised to restore the country’s more prosperous past, yet faces faces headwinds in a polarized society.

It is a stunning return to power for da Silva, 77, whose 2018 imprisonment over a corruption scandal sidelined him from that year’s election, paving the way for then-candidate Bolsonaro’s win and four years of far-right politics.

His victory marks the first time since Brazil’s 1985 return to democracy that the sitting president has failed to win reelection. His inauguration is scheduled to take place on Jan. 1.

Bolsonaro’s administration has been marked by incendiary speech, his testing of democratic institutions, his widely criticized handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the worst deforestation in the Amazon rainforest in 15 years. But he has built a devoted base by defending conservative values and presenting himself as protection from leftist policies that he says infringe on personal liberties and produce economic turmoil.

Da Silva is credited with building an extensive social welfare program during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped lift tens of millions into the middle class as well as presiding over an economic boom. But he is also remembered for his administration’s involvement in vast corruption revealed by sprawling investigations. Da Silva’s arrest in 2018 kept him out of that year’s race against Bolsonaro, a fringe lawmaker at the time who was an outspoken fan of former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Da Silva has pledged to boost spending on the poor, reestablish relationships with foreign governments and take bold action to eliminate illegal clear-cutting in the Amazon rainforest.

Da Silva has also pledged to put a halt to illegal deforestation in the Amazon. The president-elect has already pledged to install a ministry for Brazil’s original peoples, which will be run by an Indigenous person.

The highly polarized election in Brazil, the biggest economy in Latin America, extended a wave of recent leftist victories in South America, including Chile, Colombia and Argentina.