Brazil's Lula to reclaim presidency after beating Bolsonaro

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilians delivered a very tight victory to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a bitter presidential election, giving the leftist former president another shot at power in a rejection of incumbent Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right politics.

Da Silva received 50.9% of the vote and Bolsonaro 49.1%, according to the country’s election authority. Yet the morning after the results came in — and congratulations had poured in from world leaders — Bolsonaro still had yet to publicly concede or react in any way, even as truckers blockaded some roads across the country in protest.

Bolsonaro’s campaign had made repeated — unproven — claims of possible electoral manipulation before the vote, raising fears that, if he lost, he would not accept defeat and try to challenge the results.

For da Silva, the high-stakes election was a stunning comeback. His imprisonment for corruption sidelined him from the 2018 election won by Bolsonaro, who has used the presidency to promote conservative social values while also delivering incendiary speeches and testing democratic institutions.

“Today the only winner is the Brazilian people,” da Silva said in a speech Sunday evening at a hotel in downtown Sao Paulo. “It’s the victory of a democratic movement that formed above political parties, personal interests and ideologies so that democracy came out victorious.”

Da Silva is promising to govern beyond his party. He says he wants to bring in centrists and even some leaning to the right, and to restore the kind of prosperity the country enjoyed when he last served as president from 2003-2010. Yet he faces headwinds in a politically polarized society.

Bolsonaro’s four years in office have been marked by proclaimed conservatism and defense of traditional Christian values. He claimed that...