Brazil: Second Round Of Presidential Elections Confirmed

With 96.93% of the polls counted from Sunday’s election, a runoff between candidates Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and Jair Bolsonaro (PL) is confirmed.

Lula is in the lead, with 47.85% of the valid votes, having turned the race around when 70% of the votes had been counted. Bolsonaro is in second, with 43.7%. The difference between first and second place no longer allows the dispute to be settled in the first round.

Simone Tebet (MDB) is third, with 4.22%. Ciro Gomes (PDT) is fourth, with 3.05%.

Lula (PT)

Born in Garanhuns, in the state of Pernambuco, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva moved to the state of São Paulo as a child. During his adolescence, he completed a course as a lathe operator at a unit of the  National Service for Industrial Learning (Senai) and later worked as a metalworker in the city of São Bernardo do Campo, when he also became involved in union activity.

In the late 1970s and 1980s Lula led major strikes of metalworkers in the ABC region of São Paulo. Together with other unionists, intellectuals and social movement activists, he founded the Workers’ Party – Partido dos trabalhadores (PT).

He became a deputy in the Constituent Assembly that approved the 1988 Constitution and was defeated in the 1989, 1994 and 1998 presidential elections. He was elected to the highest office in the country in 2002, and reelected in 2006. He left the presidency in 2010, being succeeded by his then-civil house minister, Dilma Rousseff, who won the election with his support.

In 2017, Lula was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison for corruption and money laundering. In 2018, he had his imprisonment ordered by the then judge Sergio Moro. The convictions were overturned in 2021 by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which ruled that the 13th Federal Court in Curitiba lacked legal jurisdiction to try the charges. The STF also later considered that Moro acted without due impartiality in the process.

At 76, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is seeking his third term as president. His running mate is Geraldo Alckmin (PSB), who was his opponent in 2006. Born in Pindamonhangaba (SP), he is 68 years old, a doctor and a professor. Alckmin was one of the founders of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) and occupied the party’s board between 1988 and 2021. He was also a constituent and governed São Paulo on two occasions: from 2001 to 2006 and from 2011 to 2018.

Jair Bolsonaro (PL)

Born in 1955 in the municipality of Glicério (SP) and registered in the São Paulo city of Campinas, Jair Messias Bolsonaro graduated in 1977 from the Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras (Black Needles Military Academy), in Resende (RJ). Later, he served in the Army’s field artillery and parachute groups. A retired military man, having reached the rank of Army Captain, he is currently the 38th president of Brazil, a position he assumed on January 1, 2019.

Bolsonaro served seven terms as a federal deputy for Rio de Janeiro between 1991 and 2018. He was also previously an alderman in the Rio de Janeiro capital between 1989 and 1991.

Three of his five sons have also dabbled in politics. Carlos Bolsonaro is an alderman in the capital of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Bolsonaro is a federal deputy for São Paulo, and Flávio Bolsonaro a senator for Rio de Janeiro.

Throughout his political career, Bolsonaro has been part of nine parties. He has passed through PDC, PPR, PPB, PTB, PFL, PP, and PSC. In 2018, he was elected president of the Republic by the Social Liberal Party (PSL). This year, he ran for reelection for the PL.

The vice-presidential candidate on the slate is Walter Braga Netto. Having achieved the rank of Army general, he is currently a reserve military officer. Born in Belo Horizonte in 1957, Braga Netto headed between February 2018 and January 2019, the federal intervention in public security in Rio de Janeiro. At the time, he was Military Commander of the East, a post he held until February 2019, when he assumed the leadership of the Army Staff. As a member of the government headed by Bolsonaro, he was Chief of Staff Minister and is currently Minister of Defense.