Brazil's Bolsonaro vows to annul vote as Lula's historic win faces legal challenge

Right-wing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro has pledged to annul Brazil's presidential runoff result after losing to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, crediting a last-minute decision to extend voting hours with sowing voter confusion.

Lula won more than 51 percent of the vote in Sunday's runoff to Bolsonaro's 48 percent. Some 98.76 percent of the ballots had been counted when electoral authorities declared him the winner.

For Lula, the victory means an unprecedented fourth term in office. No other candidate in modern Brazilian history has placed second in the first round of a presidential vote, only to win in a runoff, and at age 80 Lula is also on track to beat his own record as the oldest Brazilian president to be sworn in since the country's return to democracy.

Just three weeks earlier the picture had been reversed. Bolsonaro had surprised many observers by winning the first round of voting on October 4 with 47.03 percent to Lula's 45.16 percent — a difference of 2.2 million votes. Lula spent the next three weeks trying to bring back voters who had stayed home, while making a renewed pitch to those concerned about the cost of living and the future of his signature social programmes.

As the runoff entered its final hours on Sunday, both campaigns were calling for voting to be extended. Lula's campaign accused local officials of deliberately reducing public transport services in several cities, making it difficult for lower-income voters to reach polling stations.

Lula's camp also requested more time for voters in areas affected by heavy rain and flooding. In Minas Gerais, the regional electoral court reported that 349 polling locations had lost electricity, although voting machines continued operating on backup batteries, according to local media.

Voting was originally scheduled to end at 5pm Brasilia time (20:00 GMT). Faced with the two campaigns' petitions, Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered polling stations to remain open for another two hours, until 7pm (22:00 GMT).

The decision, however, came after some stations had already closed and shut down their electronic voting machines. Zanin later clarified that stations that had already closed would remain shut and only those still open could continue accepting voters until 7pm. The result was confusion over who could still vote, with some Brazilians turned away despite the extension.

In a brief post-election address, Bolsonaro pointed to those issues as a reason to annul the vote and accused Zanin of judicial malfeasance. 'He changes the rules of the game mid-game,' Bolsonaro said. 'It is impossible to recognise the results of the election,' he told his supporters, calling the circumstances 'unacceptable'. He is likely to pursue a court challenge in an effort to overturn his defeat.

Brazil's Federal Police are investigating alleged election-related transport disruptions in five states. In Salvador, a court ordered the arrest of the city's transport secretary over allegations that he directed cuts to bus services. Lula's camp pointed to such incidents as evidence of election interference.

Bolsonaro, meanwhile, levelled similar allegations against Zanin, pointing to his history as Lula's personal lawyer. Lula named Zanin to the Supreme Court in 2023.

Figures on the global right have signalled support for Bolsonaro. Donald Trump Jr, the son of United States President Donald Trump, voiced outrage over the decision to extend voting hours, posting on social media that if a conservative government in Brazil had done this, everyone in America's mainstream press would lose their minds, but they were choosing to be silent because it was 'all for the cause'. The Trump administration has backed the Bolsonaro family.

Reuters reported on Saturday that officials in Trump's State Department had pushed for sanctions against Brazil as part of an effort to weaken Lula and return the Bolsonaro family to power. Asked on Sunday whom he wanted to win, Trump would not name a candidate. 'I don't want to get into that, but we are watching,' he told reporters.

Al Jazeera correspondent Monica Yanakiew signalled that tensions between Brazil's right wing and its court system are likely to reemerge after Sunday's results. 'The judicial system itself is very divided,' Yanakiew said, pointing to rifts within the Supreme Court. 'There will need to be a lot of political negotiation.'

Higher-than-expected turnout may have helped Lula win, according to Andrei Roman, head of polling firm AtlasIntel, who cited a drop in voter abstention as one factor behind the victory. An estimated 33.4 million Brazilians stayed home during the October 4 first round — about 21 percent of the electorate, the highest abstention rate in a general election since 1998.

In his victory speech, Lula described having to 'overcome interference coming from the outside' in his bid for a fourth term. 'The election was a defeat for denialism,' Lula said on Sunday night. 'It was a defeat for lies.' He finished by praising his 'army' of supporters, saying he highly doubted that Russia, China or the United States possessed an army as victorious as the army of democracy in his country.