Lula, for the second round

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, this Sunday night in São Paulo. Tuane Fernandes (Bloomberg)

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has won the first round of elections in Brazil.

The final count has given him 48%, almost 57 million votes.

He was two points away from the majority and on October 30 he will face Jair Bolsonaro, who is running for re-election, in a second round.

The president has been five points behind Lula da Silva, in a much more advantageous position than the ten point disadvantage that the polls attributed to him.

An intense campaign is now starting, given the polarization that marked the first round.

The left caresses power in the largest democracy in Latin America, a comeback that poses an enormous political challenge.

The country has been enduring a dangerous authoritarian drift for four years.

The disastrous management that Bolsonaro made of the pandemic resulted in 660,000 deaths, a continental record.

The president's attacks on the electronic voting system, with the consequent early denunciations of fraud, have damaged the credibility of the institutions.

The growing presence of the military in key positions in the government, and the role of guardian of the electoral results that the president ceded to the Army, even encouraged rumors of a coup d'état.

In the international arena, Brazil has isolated itself from its neighbors, with direct attacks on presidents of other countries, such as the Colombian Gustavo Petro, the Chilean Gabriel Boric and the Argentine Alberto Fernández, whom it has unceremoniously insulted.

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Lula da Silva now has an arduous job ahead of him.

There is one month left for the second round, a long road in which she will have to open up to political dialogue with the center forces that did not support her.

She has there the voter of Ciro Gomes, her former minister, naturally more turned to the left than to the right.

And to the 20% of the population eligible to vote that she decided to stay in her house.

On the eve of the election, the Workers' Party candidate said he was willing to "talk to everyone, for the good of Brazil."

He will also have to deal with a rival willing to do anything.

If the president insists on his strategy of destroying institutions, he will shake the entire scaffolding of Brazilian democracy.

It is up to Lula da Silva to deal with these tensions and prevent his rival from questioning the veracity of the result.

Lula has been president twice.

He has government teams trained in the exercise of power and has dealt with serious crises.

He has promised that he is not moved by rancor, thus dispelling the fear that he wants to take political revenge for the 20 months he spent in prison, convicted of corruption in the so-called Lava Jato Operation.

"We are going to restore peace and democracy," he said at the time of voting.

Brazilians deserve a return to that promised peace, degraded by four years of official contempt for institutions.

In a world plunged into uncertainty, as a result of the war in Ukraine, a return of Brazil, a country of continental dimensions, to the international scene is as urgent as it is essential.

Its economy is among the 15 largest in the world, it is one of the main food producers and its energy reserves are enormous.

The South American giant has all the conditions to become a clear regional player and a major global player.

Lula da Silva has shown in the past an attachment to the good manners of diplomacy, and it is to be hoped that she will now work in the same direction.

The world needs a democratic and prosperous Brazil.