Editor’s Note: Arick Wierson is a six-time Emmy Award-winning television producer and former senior media adviser to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He holds a master’s degree in economics from the Universidade do Estado de São Paulo at Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil and has worked with the country for nearly 30 years advising corporate and political clients on communications strategies. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
CNN
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This Sunday more than 120 million Brazilians went to the polls to vote in a run-off presidential election in which former President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva posted a stunning political comeback.
Lula beat incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro with 50.9% of the vote against Bolsonaro’s 49.1% – a difference of roughly two million of the eligible votes cast.
It was a nail-biter of an election with the final result coming only after nearly all of the votes from the country’s 577,000 electronic voting machines had been tabulated.
On one hand, Lula’s victory marked a sharp rebuke of Bolsonaro’s irreverent and often-times controversial governing style, which earned him the derisive moniker as the ‘Trump of the Tropics.’
Not only was Bolsonaro in fact endorsed by former US President Donald Trump, but like Trump, he was widely criticized for his handling of the coronavirus which resulted in nearly 700,000 deaths in the country, according to the World Health Organization.
Moreover, Bolsonaro’s aggressive anti-LGBT agenda, decidedly anti-environmental policies and authoritarian tendencies made him something of a pariah in the international media.
Lula, who previously served two terms as president from 2003 to 2010, also brought his fair share of baggage to this election. In fact, if it were not for his conviction being annulled on a jurisdictional technicality for his role in “Operation Car Wash” – one of the largest public corruption scandals in the world – Lula would still be serving out his 12-year prison sentence.
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