By Al Ahed Staff, Agencies
Former Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday defeated incumbent Jair Bolsonaro in an election that marked a stunning comeback for the leftist leader and the end of the country's most right-wing government.
Lula da Silva clinched Brazil's top job Sunday after besting incumbent Jair Bolsonaro with 50.90% of the vote, figures released by the country's election authority confirmed.
With 99.96% of the ballots counted, Bolsonaro gained 49.10%. The ouster marks the end of a politically heightened period for Brazil as Bolsonaro gained widespread attention for his accelerated destruction of the Amazon rainforest and the government's failure to effectively implement preventative COVID-19 measures such as masking practices. Brazil documented nearly 700,000 covid-related deaths.
The election was Brazil’s most polarizing poll since its return to democracy in 1985 after a military dictatorship that Lula, a former union leader, has rallied against and Bolsonaro, a former army captain, invokes with nostalgia.
The vote also marked the first time that the sitting president failed to win re-election. Just over two million votes separated the two candidates; the previous closest race, in 2014, was decided by a margin of roughly 3.5 million votes.
In a victory speech, da Silva acknowledged that the challenges ahead would be "immense" but that efforts to rebuild the country would be "necessary ... in all its dimensions."
"The majority of the Brazilian people made it very clear that they want more - not less - democracy," he told supporters. "This is the victory of an immense democratic movement that was formed, above political parties, personal interests and ideologies, so that democracy would win."
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