After narrowly defeating incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro in a heated election on Sunday, Lula da Silva emerged as the new president of Brazil.
Bolsonaro received 49.1 percent of the vote, while da Silva received 50.9 percent after more than 99.9% of the votes were counted in the runoff election. This was the country’s closest election in over three decades.
Lula da Silva was barred from contesting the elections in 2018
It is a startling turnabout for da Silva, 77, who was barred from contesting in the 2018 elections due to a corruption scandal.
The inauguration of Da Silva is slated for January 1st, 2023. He was president for the last time from 2003 to 2010.
In a speech at a hotel in downtown Sao Paulo, he said, “Today the only winner is the Brazilian people.”
“This isn’t a victory of mine or the Workers’ Party, nor the parties that supported me in the campaign. It’s the victory of a democratic movement that formed above political parties, personal interests, and ideologies so that democracy came out victorious.”
When he was president from 2003 to 2010, Lula promised to bring back the state-driven economic growth and social policies that had helped millions of people escape poverty. He also vows to make Brazil a leader in international climate negotiations and stop the devastation of the Amazon rainforest, which is at a 15-year high.
Who is Lula da Silva?
Lula was raised in extreme poverty. He was the seventh kid out of eight born to uneducated farmers in the parched state of Pernambuco in the northeast. When he was seven years old, his family moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil’s industrial center, as part of a migrant surge.
Before starting his career as a metalworker at the young age of 14, Lula worked as a shoeshine boy and a peanut vendor. He suffered a finger loss in a job accident in the 1960s. He ascended swiftly to the position of union leader and organized significant strikes in the 1970s to overthrow the military dictatorship of the time. He co-founded the Workers’ Party, standing as its candidate for president nine years later.
Political career
Between 1989 to 1998, Lula ran for president three times but failed, finally winning in 2002 and running again four years later. He was running for president for the sixth time.
During his term from 2003 to 2010, Da Silva is recognized for establishing a sizable social welfare program that assisted in bringing tens of millions of people into the middle class and presided over an economic boom.
With an approval rating of over 80% when he left office, Lula, was referred to as “the most popular politician on Earth” by the then US President Barack Obama.
Personal life
The twice-widowed father of five overcame throat cancer, and in 2017 he lost Marisa Leticia Rocco, his wife of 40 years, to a stroke.
Lula has said he is again “in love as if I were 20 years old” with Rosangela “Janja” da Silva, a sociologist and PT activist whom he married in May.
