Brazil’s left-wing President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won a fourth term in office, defeating right-wing challenger Flávio Bolsonaro in a run-off vote. The 80-year-old took just under 52% of the vote and thanked cheering supporters in São Paulo, saying they had “defended Brazilian democracy.”
Bolsonaro, who had won the first round, described the result as “inexplicable” and called for it to be annulled.
However, electoral law experts told BBC News Brasil that the chances of an annulment are remote. Fernando Neisser of the Institute of Lawyers of São Paulo said annulment would be “difficult from a legal standpoint” and would depend on the legal narrative presented by Bolsonaro’s lawyers.
He noted that Lula’s margin of about 4.4 million votes made an annulment unlikely. Alberto Rollo added that Brazil’s presidential election dates are fixed by the constitution, meaning the result cannot simply be set aside and rerun.
Flávio Bolsonaro’s father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is currently serving a jail sentence under house arrest for plotting a coup after losing the last election.
Lula is a member of the left-wing Workers’ Party and a former metalworker. He has now won four non-consecutive presidential elections, serving two terms from January 2003 to December 2010 and again from January 2023. In his victory speech, he praised younger voters who he said had taken to the streets to “defend democracy.”
During the 2022 campaign, his supporters called him the “saviour of the Amazon” and praised his commitment to protecting the rainforest. More recently, however, some environmentalists have criticised his stance on exploratory oil drilling near the mouth of the Amazon.
