• Lula says ‘Brazil is back’s in victory speech
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro lost the presidential election as declared on Sunday evening. With 99 percent reporting, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva scored 60,144,431 votes at 50.9 percent, whereas the far right’s Bolsonaro got just 58,053,463.
President Joe Biden has already congratulated the new president.
“I send my congratulations to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his election to be the next president of Brazil following free, fair, and credible elections. I look forward to working together to continue the cooperation between our two countries in the months and years ahead,” he said in a statement.
There is a question about whether Bolsonaro will accept the election results. Last week, Lula expressed concern that he might not, a tactic that ally Donald Trump utilized in his 2020 election results and other far-right candidates have adopted.
In a press conference Monday, Lula said he hoped Bolsonaro “will have a moment of sanity and phone me to accept the election result.”
“If need be,” Bolsonaro said in a June speech, “we will go to war.”
The New York Times interviewed a Bolsonaro supporter named Kátia de Lima, “There will be a civil war. And the armed forces are going to be on our side.”
In the past, Bolsonaro has questioned the legitimacy of electronic voting machines.