Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva has been elected the next president of Brazil-Latin America’s largest country.
Key points
- He won the presidential election narrowly by securing just about 50.9% of the votes. The incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro got 49.1 percent votes.
- Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva achieved what has never happened in the country’s 34–year-old democratic history — defeating an incumbent President seeking re-election.
- Lula last served as president of Brazil from 2003-2010. This will be his third term, after previously governing Brazil for two consecutive terms between 2003 and 2010.
- Lula had to work hard to defend his legacy, tarnished by a prison sentence for nearly two years, after being found guilty of corruption in the Car Wash scandal. Later, he was released from jail after reports revealed collusion between the prosecution and judiciary in the judicial process.
About Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
- He was the 7th of eight children born to a family of illiterate farmers in the northeastern state of Pernambuco.
- Lula worked as a shoeshine boy and peanut vendor before becoming a metalworker at the tender age of 14.
- In the 1960s, he lost a finger in a workplace accident.
- He rose quickly to become head of his trade union, and led major strikes in the 1970s that challenged the then-military dictatorship.
- In 1980, Lula co-founded the Workers’ Party.
- He lost 3 presidential bids from 1989 to 1998, finally succeeding in 2002.
- Da Silva is credited with building an extensive social welfare programme during his 2003-2010 tenure that helped lift tens of millions into the middle class as well as presiding over an economic boom.
- He is also remembered for his involvement in vast corruption. Da Silva was jailed for for 580 days for corruption and money laundering.
- His convictions were later annulled by Brazil’s supreme court, which ruled the presiding judge had been biased and colluded with prosecutors.
