Runoff election Brazil | Brazil: Lula scores beyond the left camp

Turnaround successful: supporters of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva celebrate the victory in Brasília. Photo: AFP/Evaristo Sa Lula has made history twice: for the first time, the runner-up in the first round in Brazil won the runoff election, and for the first time a Brazilian is scheduled to take up a fourth presidency - on January 1, 2027 at the age of 81, his birthday is on October 27.

Apart from the charismatic politician himself, not many people expected this Virada - a turnaround that was considered extremely unlikely three weeks ago. But Lula, like Gustavo Petro in Colombia in 2022, managed to mobilize voters. Eleven million votes more than in the first round, more than four million votes ahead of the ultra-right Flávio Bolsonaro is an impressive result that Lula owes above all to his hundreds of thousands of supporters, who - from social media to campaign stands and doorstep visits - threw everything into the balance for him.

Lula's victory is not just good news for Brazil, but for all of America and beyond. Uruguay is not alone in South America with a progressive government; Mexico gains an important ally in Latin America against the ultra-right that is spreading in the region. Brazil remains a regional power that defends multilateralism, that advocates for the protection of the rainforest and that rejects the "Shield of the Americas" - the alliance that Washington has forged with 14 Latin American and Caribbean countries and that is unabashedly committed to the right of the strongest.

Lula has once again shown how to win elections across ideological boundaries. And after that he always governed with a lot of compromises that many on the left didn't like for good reasons.

After his re-election, Lula will have to defend and consolidate Brazil's democracy in his final term, which suffered badly under the ultra-right Jair Bolsonaro's term in office from 2019 to 2023. His predecessor is under house arrest because of an attempted coup against Lula's 2022 election victory.

Who on the left could succeed Lula is the question that must be answered in parallel with his last term in office. It is one of the many challenges that Lula will have to face at the end of his phenomenal political career. Because he certainly doesn't want to leave a vacuum.

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