Per Editor: Bi Lu Name
According to CCTV news on the 31st, on the evening of October 30, local time, about 93% of the votes in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election have been counted. According to the statistics of the Brazilian High Electoral Court, the authoritative Brazilian investigation agency "Page Data" said that the candidate of the Labor Party, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won the general election.
Lula, 77, founded the Workers' Party in 1980 and served two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, the first worker-born president in Brazil's history and the second to be re-elected through direct elections. Lula was sentenced to 580 days in prison for corruption after leaving office, forcing him to withdraw from the election in 2018. Lula's conviction was quashed last year, allowing him to run for president this year.
Former President Lula, candidate of Brazil's left-wing Workers' Party, casts his ballot at a polling station in São Paulo on October 30. Image source: Xinhua News Agency
Lula won
According to CCTV news, on the evening of October 30, local time, about 93% of the votes in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election have been counted. According to the statistics of the Brazilian High Electoral Court, the authoritative Brazilian investigation agency "Page Data" said that the candidate of the Labor Party, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, won the general election.
Born in October 1945, Lula founded the Brazilian Workers' Party in 1980 and served two consecutive terms as president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, the first worker-born president in the country's history. Lula was imprisoned in April 2018 on corruption charges and released in November of the following year. In 2021, Lula's previous conviction for crimes was ruled invalid by a Brazilian court.
Former President Lula, candidate of Brazil's left-wing Workers' Party, casts his ballot at a polling station in São Paulo on October 30. Image source: Xinhua News Agency
Lula officially announced his candidacy in May 2022 to partner former governor of the state of São Paulo, Alcmin, in the presidential election, his sixth candidacy. Judging by the results of the pre-election polls, Lula's approval rating has always been ahead of the current president, Bolsonaro. He has said that if elected, he will set out to rebuild the Brazilian economy, strengthen public financial management, limit privatization of key national industries, and implement tax reforms. In terms of international policy, Lula pledged to strengthen cooperation mechanisms among Latin American countries, deepen BRICS cooperation, and strive to improve Brazil's position on the world stage.
According to a report by the reference news network on May 20, the website of the US "Time" magazine published an article entitled "Brazil's most popular president ends political exile and promises to save the country" on May 4. The article writes that Lula believes that lightning will strike a person twice. "I ran only because I could do better than before," he said. ”
In 1952, when Lula was 7 years old, his mother brought him and his seven siblings from the deserty northeast of Brazil to São Paulo, where the family spent two weeks in an uncovered truck compartment. They lived in the back room of a bar, and Lula dropped out of school at 12 to help feed her family. At the age of 17, he worked as a doorknob in a factory, and once during a night shift, his little finger was rolled off on a machine. At the age of 23, Lula married her neighbor Maria Delodes and died of hepatitis two years later, when she was eight months pregnant, and their first son died with him. Lula later said she was a victim of poor Brazil's lack of access to quality health care. A few years later, in 1975, he was elected leader of the San Bernardo do Campo Steelworkers Union. San Bernardo do Campo is a district of São Paulo.
Lula says the secret of his success lies in his ability to engage with Brazil's working class — an extraordinary ability in a country where politicians often make a fuss when it comes to milk prices. "I am proud to prove that a steelworker without a university degree is better equipped to run the country than the elite in Brazil," he said. Because the art of management is with the heart, not with the brain. ”
Lula's populism belies a shrewd pragmatism that allows him to navigate Brazil's turbulent political waves. As president, Lula continued the fiscal conservatism of his right-wing predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, sticking to the agreement reached with the IMF and satisfying the demands of investors. At the same time, his "Family Grant" program raised the incomes of poor families, along with other policies that expanded their access to education and health care.
On October 27, local time, data released by Brazil's National Institute of Geographic Information and Statistics showed that the country's unemployment rate fell to 8.7% in the third quarter of this year, down 0.6 percentage points from 9.3% in the previous quarter and 3.9 percentage points from the 12.6% unemployment rate in the third quarter of last year.
Data show that in the third quarter of this year, Brazil's employed population increased by 1%, reaching a total of 99.3 million; The number of unemployed people fell by 6.2% to a total of 9.5 million, the lowest since December 2015. The data also shows that of the 99.3 million employed population, the informal employment reached 39.1 million, accounting for 39.4%.
The basic pattern and determinants remain unchanged
According to Global Magazine, the results of the first round of voting in the 2022 Brazilian general election show that the basic pattern of Brazilian politics of "the left and right wings vying for the president and the middle forces seeking Congress" have not undergone fundamental changes, and the decisive factors affecting voters' political choices are still the economic situation, inflation and employment issues, residents' income status, as well as candidates' solutions to important economic and livelihood issues, governance ability, and so on.
First of all, Brazil's presidential election still presents a significant traditional pattern of "left-right confrontation", and under the strong attack of left and right forces and the weak integration of their own camp, the competitiveness of centrist parties for the presidency is deteriorating.
In the first round of voting, Lula and Bolsonaro combined for more than 91.6% of the vote, while centrist or "third way" candidates received less than 8.4% of the vote; In the 2018 general election, the left and right candidates Ada and Bolsonaro received a combined first-round vote of 75.31%, while the candidates of other parties combined received 24.69%. Democratic Labour candidate Gomez received 12.47 per cent of the vote in the first round of voting in 2018, but this year it shrank sharply to 3.04 per cent.
President Jair Bolsonaro, center, candidate of Brazil's right-wing Liberal Party, leaves his polling station after voting in Rio de Janeiro on October 30. Image source: Xinhua News Agency
Second, the centrist party still uses Congress as the main battlefield in the general election, and has continued the normal performance of the previous term as a whole, becoming an important force in both houses of the next Congress, and the future governance of the Brazilian government will still be largely influenced by the Congress where the centrist party is the majority.
According to the results of the first round of voting in this election, parties other than the Liberal Party and the Workers' Party will hold more than 65% of the seats in both houses of the next parliament.
Since a large number of centrist parties hold a majority of seats in Congress and the ruling party does not hold the proportion of seats required to gain control, the position and attitude of centrist parties often become a key factor affecting the Brazilian government's implementation of governance concepts, domestic and foreign affairs, and the implementation of policy guidelines. The left-wing and right-wing political parties that have firmly held the presidency since the beginning of the new century have had to use various means to win the support of the central parties in the Congress for the government during their administration.
Third, the results of the first round of voting reflect that voters' feelings and views on major issues related to the national economy and people's livelihood, such as economic conditions, inflation and employment, are still important factors affecting the Brazilian election.
President Bolsonaro, the candidate of Brazil's right-wing Liberal Party, talks with supporters before voting at a polling station in Rio de Janeiro on October 30. Image source: Xinhua News Agency
In the early days of the pandemic, Brazil's economy was hit hard, with unemployment hitting record highs and reaching 14.9% in the first quarter of 2021. In a poll conducted by the advisory body IPEC in June of that year, Bolsonaro's approval rating was only 23%, far lower than Lula's 49%. However, since the third quarter of 2021, the Brazilian economy has begun to recover and achieved four consecutive quarters of growth due to the widespread spread of vaccination and the easing of the epidemic; At the same time, the employment situation has improved, and in May~July 2022, the employed population in Brazil was 98.7 million, the highest since the statistics began in 2012; Inflation has fallen for the second consecutive month since July, and annual inflation expectations have been lowered for 11 consecutive weeks. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro's poll approval rally picked up until he received 43.2 percent of the vote in the first round.
Fourth, through the first round of voting, it can be seen that Brazilian voters attach the same importance to the candidate's national governance capacity and economic development plan.
In the media debates held before the election, former President Lula and current President Jair Bolsonaro were attacked in areas where the Petrobras corruption case occurred during the Workers' Party administration, Bolsonaro's public deceptive statements and provocative acts against other authorities. The results of the first round of voting showed that many voters accepted Lula's explanation of the corruption allegation, or that they did not take the inconclusive allegation as much as they expected the country's future development.
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