RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AFP) — Far-right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro won Brazil’s presidential election Sunday, according to official results that gave him 55.7 percent of the vote with more than 88 percent of the ballots counted.
His victory over leftist candidate Fernando Haddad marks a lunge to the right for Latin America’s largest country, after a divisive campaign marked by widespread outrage at the political class — but also fears over Bolsonaro’s denigrating remarks about women, gays and blacks.
Haddad, a former mayor of Sao Paulo, took 44.3 percent of the vote, according to the results released by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
Bolsonaro supporters flooded the streets in front of his home in the neighborhood of Barra da Tijuca in Rio de Janeiro, waving Brazilian flags and lighting up the sky with fireworks.
“All these people here are outraged, upset about corruption and crime, and we are with Bolsonaro. The people have spoken. For the first time I feel represented,” said Andre Luiz Lobo, 38, a businessman who — not incidentally, given accusations of racism against his candidate — is black.
Bolsonaro, 63, a long-time congressman, will take office on January 1.
The election came on the heels of Brazil’s worst-ever recession, a staggering multi-billion-dollar corruption scandal and a year of record-setting violent crime.
Haddad was standing as a surrogate for popular — but imprisoned — ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who led Brazil through the boom years of 2003 to 2010, before both the country and his left-wing political project went bust.
The highly controversial Lula, who stands accused of masterminding the massive pilfering of state oil company Petrobras, is serving a 12-year sentence for bribery.
Bolsonaro, an unabashed admirer of Brazil’s brutal military dictatorship (1964-1985), ran on a pledge to clean up crime and corruption with a firm grip.
© Agence France-Presse