SAO PAULO ― President Joe Biden congratulated former leftist Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on his victory within the nation’s presidential election Sunday night time that additionally lauded the elections as “free, honest, and credible elections.”
The congratulatory assertion from the White Home got here lower than an hour after Brazil’s electoral authorities declared da Silva, who previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, because the winner of the race towards right-wing incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro has spent the final two years spreading conspiracy theories in an try to undermine the elections. Da Silva and his marketing campaign, together with many officers inside Brazil, noticed swift worldwide recognition of the outcomes as key to blunting any potential try from Bolsonaro to contest the outcomes.
“I ship my congratulations to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on his election to be the subsequent president of Brazil following free, honest, and credible elections,” Biden mentioned in a press release. “I look ahead to working collectively to proceed the cooperation between our two nations within the months and years forward.”
Da Silva completed roughly 2 million votes forward of Bolsonaro in a race that was a key take a look at of Brazil’s democracy, which Bolsonaro has spent his presidency attempting to undermine. Bolsonaro, an ally of former U.S. President Donald Trump, by no means congratulated or acknowledged Biden’s 2020 election victory and continued to query it forward of his first assembly along with his U.S. counterpart this summer season.
Folha de S.Paulo, one in all Brazil’s largest newspapers, reported Sunday that the Biden administration additionally deliberate to ship Nationwide Safety Adviser Jake Sullivan to Brazil within the coming weeks, a transfer the paper interpreted as meant to assist bolster the legitimacy of the election and guarantee a clean transition.
Da Silva has pledged to rebuild worldwide relationships which have frayed beneath Bolsonaro, and on Saturday mentioned that he would search to journey to america early in his presidency.
He hailed his return to the presidency as a victory for the world’s fourth-largest democracy in his first speech as president-elect Sunday night time.
“Nearly all of the Brazilian individuals made it clear that they need extra, not much less, democracy,” da Silva mentioned in his first speech as president-elect. “They need extra social inclusion, not much less. They need extra, not much less, equality and fraternity in our nation.”