Brazil Ousts Conservative President Bolsonaro After One Term

With 99.2 percent of the vote counted, the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil has announced that former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won his country’s presidential election (again) over current President Jair Bolsonaro. It’s a dramatic end to Bolsonaro’s one term in office marked by four divisive years in office. https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1586855273398173696 From the New York Times:

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.

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.

Without evidence, the president has 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.

Read more at the New York Times. In March 2021, Bolsonaro told his people they needed to stop “whining” about the COVID-19 pandemic. A life-long homophobe, in 2011 he told Playboy that he would be “incapable of loving a homosexual child.” “I’m not going to act like a hypocrite here,” he said. “I’d rather have my son die in an accident than show up with some mustachioed guy.” Bolsonaro’s supporters have threatened to “take to the streets” in violence (much like the January 6 invasion of the Capitol building in 2021) if their guy was declared the loser. https://twitter.com/GuardianUS/status/1586858881136852994 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1586857019214278656 https://twitter.com/AP/status/1586856560566931463