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.
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...
...Reeling from the deepest recession in the country's history, a corruption scandal that tarnished politicians across the ideological spectrum, and a record-high number of homicides last year, Brazilians picked a candidate who not only rejected the political establishment but at times also seemed to reject the most basic democratic tenets.
Mr. Bolsonaro said that President Trump called to congratulate him, calling it "obviously a very friendly contact."
Part of the reason for Mr. Bolsonaro's victory was the collapse of the left. Many cried foul after former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the longtime front-runner in the race, was ruled ineligible to run after he was imprisoned in April to start serving a 12-year sentence for corruption and money laundering...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/w...-election.html