Lula wins Brazil election despite corruption past, President Bolsonaro remains silent
Global praise for Brazil’s Lula Da Silva, who wins election after prison sentence for corruption
Brazil's election is now officially over and the former president of brazil Jair Bolsonaro has yet to concede
More than 17 hours after Brazil's electoral chief declared Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva the winner of the presidential election, defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro has yet to concede.
The far-right president is said to have gone to sleep after he narrowly lost to his left-wing arch-rival.
His silence is raising concern that he may not accept the result.
He has in the past cast unfounded doubts on the voting system.
Combative statements from Mr. Bolsonaro in the past - such as that "only God" could remove him from office - mean there is a tense wait for him to appear in public.
Brazil's Superior Electoral Court announced that Lula had won the run-off of the presidential election just minutes before 20:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Sunday.
With all the votes counted, Lula had 50.9% of the valid votes against Mr. Bolsonaro's 49.1%.
In his victory speech, Lula touched on the political rift running through Brazil which further deepened during a bitterly fought and often acrimonious election campaign.
"This country needs peace and unity. This population doesn't want to fight anymore," he said, promising to govern for all Brazilians and not just for those who had voted for him.
Congratulations have poured in from across the world, including from the leaders of Britain, China, France, India, and Russia. US President Biden said the win came "following free, fair, and credible elections".
But even though it is traditional for the losing candidate to phone the winner, and to make a statement acknowledging their defeat, Mr. Bolsonaro has so far remained silent
People close to the president said that after the result he had "gone to sleep" at the presidential palace in the capital, Brasilia.
In the morning, a presidential adviser and Mr. Bolsonaro's vice-presidential running mate were seen arriving at the palace, but it is not clear if he met them and what was said.
Later, Mr. Bolsonaro was seen leaving the palace and traveling to the building where his official office is located.
Brazilian media are reporting that everything has been set up for a presidential news conference but that no one knows if one will be held in the next hours.
Meanwhile, close allies of Mr. Bolsonaro have acknowledged Lula's election win, among them the powerful leader of the lower house of Congress, Arthur Lira, and Tarcísio de Freitas, who is the new governor of São Paulo state.
The strong backing Lula has received both at home and abroad so quickly after his win will make it more difficult for Mr. Bolsonaro to contest the result, analysts say.
However, an uncooperative outgoing president could make the two-month transition period until Lula is due to be sworn in on 1 January 2023 a lot bumpier.
Some disruption has already been caused by lorry drivers loyal to Mr. Bolsonaro, who have blocked roads in at least 13 states.
A number of the roadblocks have reportedly been cleared but the remaining ones are causing considerable disruption on major roads.
Lula has not talked about his defeated rival since his victory speech and has instead held a meeting with the Argentine president.
His party says he will speak to US President Biden on the phone later today.
Will Bolsonaro concede?
While the election is over, there remains the concern for the health of one of the world’s biggest democracies. President Jair Bolsonaro has spent years attacking Brazil’s democratic institutions, including a sustained effort to undermine its voting system, leading millions of Brazilians to lose faith in the integrity of their nation’s elections.
Now, much of the country is wondering: Will he accept his defeat?
Sunday’s vote split this country of 217 million people nearly down the middle, with many voters on each side viewing the choice as an existential one for the nation.
Yet in the aftermath of the vote that ousted Mr. Bolsonaro after just one term, there was little immediate sign that the president’s allies and supporters would mount an effort to dispute the results.
Far-right lawmakers who had warned of fraud in the past immediately recognized Mr. da Silva as the president-elect. Prominent conservative pundits called Mr. da Silva an ex-convict and corrupt but did not claim the election was rigged. And many of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters on the streets of Rio de Janeiro, while shouting about fraud in general, cleared out of a gathering outside the president’s condo in Rio de Janeiro to return to their homes dejected.
As of 9 p.m. local time, Mr. Bolsonaro had yet to concede or publicly address the country.
The close race, high stakes, and deep polarization led to an ugly election campaign. Misinformation has soared in recent weeks, with supporters of Mr. da Silva accusing Mr. Bolsonaro of being a cannibal and a pedophile, while Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters have called Mr. da Silva a gang leader, a communist and a Satanist who wants to close the nation’s churches.
Election officials tried to intervene, ordering posts and videos on the internet that they said were false. Those efforts slowed the deluge of misleading information, but they also became their own controversy, drawing a swell of complaints of unfair refereeing, particularly from Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies.
Last year, Mr. Bolsonaro told his supporters there were only three outcomes to the election: He wins, he is killed or he is arrested. He then added, “Tell the bastards I’ll never be arrested.”
That sort of rhetoric raised alarms that Mr. Bolsonaro would not accept the results. He was one of the last world leaders to recognize President Biden’s victory in 2020, repeating former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, including just two days before his first meeting with Mr. Biden earlier this year.
There is no credible evidence of fraud in Brazil’s electronic voting machines since they were introduced in 1996. Yet Mr. Bolsonaro has questioned the system for years.
Earlier this year, his criticism of the system took on a new gravity when Brazil’s military joined in. Leaders of the armed forces pushed election officials for changes to the system, rattling a country that suffered under a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985.
But eventually, military and election officials agreed to a change to some tests of the voting machines on Election Day, and military leaders have since suggested they are satisfied with the system’s security.
In recent weeks, military leaders also said privately that they would not support any efforts by Mr. Bolsonaro to challenge the results.
On Friday, in an interview after the final debate, Mr. Bolsonaro was asked directly whether he would accept the vote’s results, regardless of the outcome.
“There’s no doubt,” he said. “Whoever gets more votes, takes it. That’s democracy.”
Reporting by and all rights reserved for The New York Times, AFP, Reuters, Associated Press, and South China Morning Post
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