Brazilians voted out their far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro, after a single term and replaced him with former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Dal New York Times.
Voters in Brazil on Sunday ousted President Jair Bolsonaro after just one term and elected the leftist former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to replace him, election officials said, a rebuke to Mr. Bolsonaro’s far-right movement and his divisive four years in office.
The victory completes a stunning political revival for Mr. da Silva — from the presidency to prison and back — that had once seemed unthinkable. It also ends Mr. Bolsonaro’s turbulent time as the region’s most powerful leader. It was the first time an incumbent president failed to win re-election in the 34 years of Brazil’s modern democracy.
For years, he attracted global attention for policies that accelerated the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and exacerbated the pandemic, which left nearly 700,000 dead in Brazil, while also becoming a major international figure of the far right for his brash attacks on the left, the media and Brazil’s democratic institutions.
More recently, his efforts to undermine Brazil’s election system drew particular concern at home and abroad, as well as worldwide attention to Sunday’s vote as an important test for one of the world’s largest democracies.
Without evidence, Mr. Bolsonaro criticized the nation’s electronic voting machines as rife with fraud and suggested he might not accept a loss, much like former President Donald J. Trump. Many of his supporters vowed to take to the streets at his command.
