Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who turns 81 on October 27, was re-elected as Brazil’s president on Sunday.As per Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court, Lula secured 51.79 per cent of valid votes to defeat Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro.
The victory gives Lula a fourth non-consecutive presidential term (2002, 2006, 2022), extending a political career that began in the country’s metalworking industry and grew through trade union activism and electoral politics.
Lula became president of the metalworkers' union in 1975. He played a prominent role in major workers’ strikes in the late 1970s and helped establish a political movement that eventually took him from trade union activism to national office.He first became president of Brazil in January 2003 and was re-elected in 2006, serving two consecutive terms until 2010. His successor was Dilma Rousseff, a fellow Workers’ Party member, who won the presidency in 2010 and was re-elected in 2014.Lula returned to the presidency in 2023 after defeating Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 election.
Lula’s political career also faced a major setback when he was imprisoned in 2018 following a conviction in corruption cases linked to Brazil’s Operation Car Wash investigation. It prevented him from contesting that year’s presidential election.In 2021, Lula was released as Brazil's Supreme Court annulled his sentence after police found messages that showed the judge who convicted him was biased.Following his return to active politics after 580 days in prison, Lula became the biggest critic of Jair Bolsonaro. He subsequently contested the 2022 election and defeated Bolsonaro, becoming the president of Brazil for a third term after more than a decade in office.His latest victory adds another chapter to a career spanning trade union activism, two earlier presidential terms, a period of imprisonment and a return to elected office.
(With agency inputs from PTI and ANI)