Left-Wing Figure Lula da Silva Wins Brazil Presidential Election Again

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won the Brazilian presidential election once again after securing 51.79% of the valid votes in the second round on Monday (26/10/2026).

As reported by the BBC, Lula, a prominent Brazilian left-wing figure, held a 4.4 million vote lead over his right-wing rival, Flávio Bolsonaro, who received 48.21%.

This victory was quite dramatic considering that Lula lost the first round with 45% of the votes, while Bolsonaro secured 47% on 4 October 2026.

Lula took to the streets to celebrate his victory over Bolsonaro—the son of former President Jair Bolsonaro and a figure aligned with US President Donald Trump. This marks his fourth term at the helm of the Brazilian presidency.

"This, my fourth term, will be the best of any president in the history of this country. It will be the one in which I listen most to the Brazilian people," Lula said.

The BBC explained that during his time as President of Brazil, Lula pumped billions of dollars into social programmes and claimed to have helped reverse Brazil's historic inequalities.

By increasing the minimum wage well above the rate of inflation and broadening state support for the poorest groups through a family assistance programme, Bolsa Família, he helped around 44 million people and strengthened his support among the poor.

However, many observers argue that the programme failed to address the structural problems that underpin poverty, such as a lack of access to education.

He completed his tenure eight years later in 2010, after serving two terms as president.

In a separate report, the BBC also recounted that Lula was a metalworker who found employment in an industrial city near São Paulo. He lost the little finger of his left hand in an accident during the 1960s.

Initially uninterested in practical politics, Lula threw himself entirely into trade union activism.

He was subsequently elected leader of the Metalworkers' Union—comprising around 100,000 members—in 1975. He then transformed trade union activism in Brazil by turning an organisation that had largely supported the government into an independent movement.

In 1980, Lula brought together trade unionists, intellectuals, Trotskyites (a branch of Marxist-Leninist thought developed by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky), and Church activists to found the Workers' Party (PT), the first major socialist party in Brazil's history.

Together with the PT, he also reshaped Brazil's power structure through a more pragmatic social democratic platform.

Even so, Lula was later imprisoned over allegations of high-level corruption stemming from the investigation known as Operation Car Wash (Operação Lava Jato). In July 2017, he was sentenced to over nine years in prison for allegedly receiving bribes in the form of a beachside apartment from the engineering firm OAS—a sentence later increased to 12 years upon appeal.

Lula was also sentenced to 12 years and 11 months in prison on charges of corruption and money laundering for allegedly accepting bribes from two construction and engineering firms to fund home renovations for himself and his family.

He maintained his innocence throughout, viewing the cases as politically motivated.

After serving roughly 18 months of his sentence, he was released in 2019 following a Supreme Court ruling that declared his detention procedurally invalid, as it occurred before all avenues for appeal had been exhausted.