RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil on Sunday became the latest country to drift toward the far right, electing a strident populist as president in the nation’s most radical political change since democracy was restored more than 30 years ago.
The president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, has exalted the country’s military dictatorship, advocated torture and threatened to destroy, jail or drive into exile his political opponents.
He won by tapping into a deep well of resentment at the status quo in Brazil — a country whiplashed by rising crime and two years of political and economic turmoil — and by presenting himself as the alternative.
“We have everything we need to become a great nation,” Mr. Bolsonaro said Sunday night shortly after the race was called in a video broadcast on his Facebook account. “Together we will change the destiny of Brazil.”
He appeared eager to dispel concerns that he would govern despotically, saying his government would be a “defender of the Constitution, democracy and liberty.”
Mr. Bolsonaro, who will take the helm of Latin America’s biggest nation, is further to the right than any president in the region, where voters have recently embraced more conservative leaders in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Paraguay and Colombia. He joins a number of far-right politicians who have risen to power around the world, including Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary.
“This is a really radical shift,” said Scott Mainwaring, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government who specializes in Brazil. “I can’t think of a more extremist leader in the history of democratic elections in Latin America who has been elected.”
With 98 percent of votes counted, Mr. Bolsonaro was ahead with 55 percent, guaranteeing him a win over Fernando Haddad of the leftist Workers’ Party, who had 45 percent.
Hundreds of supporters gathered outside Mr. Bolsonaro’s seaside home in Rio de Janeiro, jumping and hugging one another when the results were announced. As golden fireworks lit up the sky, they chanted “mito,” or legend, paying homage to their president-elect. Read more Nytimes
