The suspense will have lasted until the last minutes of the counting of the votes. “Twenty years after his first election, and twelve years after the end of his second term, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva [Parti des travailleurs, gauche] was elected this Sunday president of Brazil”, relate The globe. The Rio daily stresses that it took 98.81% of the officially counted votes for the electoral justice system to announce the final result. The gap, once all the votes are taken into account, is indeed very tight: Lula obtains 50.9% of the valid votes against 49.1% for the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro – i.e. 2.1 million ballots in absolute value.
Among the front pages of the press in the country and abroad, the major newspapers underline the division of Brazil and the work of reunification which awaits the elected president. So The state of Sao Paulo, quoting Lula’s victory speech, which states: “There are not two Brazils, it’s time to lay down our arms.” In neighboring Argentina, the major daily Clarion speaks of a victory that was played out “very little”, when the American business daily The Wall Street Journal evokes the “confirmation of a consolidation of the left throughout Latin America”.