Brazilian right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro overtook President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil’s tightly contested presidential runoff on Sunday evening, as results trickled in after a Supreme Court-mandated pause in vote counting injected confusion into an already tense runoff race.
With over 20% of tallies reported, Bolsonaro, the son of convicted former President Jair Bolsonaro, led with 50.02% to Lula’s 49.98%. A victory for Bolsonaro, 45, would extend a wave of right-wing victories for Latin American candidates friendly to US President Donald Trump, while a fourth mandate for Lula would be a bulwark against Washington’s influence in the region as his government has pushed back on US trade and security policies. Yet the contest threatens to be overshadowed by legal disputes after Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin, who was formerly Lula’s lawyer, accepted a request by Lula’s campaign to extend voting, pointing to public transportation issues in three cities in the state of Bahia. Zanin’s decision landed right around the election’s 5pm local time cutoff, creating confusion as some polling stations had already closed. “It’s hard to imagine what the legal basis for this could possibly be. It doesn’t inspire credibility.”
In a subsequent ruling, Zanin said those stations would remain shut, allowing authorities to begin tallying those votes, but that polling stations that had not closed after the official cutoff could keep receiving voters for an additional two hours. “Depending on the election result, there is a possibility that the losing side might attempt to contest the outcome, arguing that many people were unable to vote even with the extended deadline,” said Vera Chemim, a constitutional lawyer in São Paulo. The senator’s brother Eduardo Bolsonaro, speaking on a live stream on his YouTube channel, questioned why the Supreme Court had ruled in a process overseen by the country’s federal electoral court: “Strange, isn’t it?” he said.
