When Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva scored his surprise election victory on Sunday, winning an unprecedented fourth term in office, his supporters were euphoric. The joy they felt over Lula’s victory has echoed across large parts of the Global South – and could restore some hope to the grouping that has sought to give emerging countries a greater stake on the world stage, the BRICS alliance. At a time when United States President Donald Trump is seeking to reassert US power and has cast BRICS as a threat to US interests, Lula’s victory in Brazil offers the alliance a measure of political reassurance, experts say.
A win by his rival, Flavio Bolsonaro, could have threatened Brazil’s commitment to the bloc, given his links to Trump and calls to reconsider the country’s role in BRICS. Instead, Lula’s return gives the grouping one fewer reason to fear a retreat from within – as it continues to help forge a more multipolar future for a world dominated by the US. As Esmat Zaidan, professor of public policy at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, told Al Jazeera, “The victory of Lula is important to BRICS’ political continuation in the current climate as it seeks to increase the bloc’s role and make it stronger in global governance.” It was clear to analysts that Lula’s win would safeguard the continuation of the BRICS alliance, while under Bolsonaro, its future may have floundered.
Lula himself was one of the architects of the bloc when it was founded nearly two decades ago, and has sought to advance its role on the global stage. According to Zaidan, Bolsonaro’s desire to reconsider Brazil’s participation in BRICS and instead pursue closer alignment with Washington would have weakened the bloc’s political cohesion and potentially slowed cooperation on trade and financial reform. Bolsonaro had reportedly also promised the US Trade Representative that Brazil’s Pix instant payment system would stay out of non-Western payment schemes, as the US seeks to safeguard global dominance of the dollar, said Imran Khalid, a geostrategic analyst and senior fellow at Foreign Policy in Focus.
That was the real risk, more than Brazil walking out,” Khalid told Al Jazeera. Still, Zaidan cautioned that continuity of the alliance does not amount to total unity within. But it has never really acted as a political unit.
Its members are too different,” he said. That tells you how limited its cohesion is,” Burton added. The apparent relief in the Global South to Lula’s win reflects a broader concern among many emerging economies about their exposure to decisions made in Washington, “particularly regarding trade, tariffs and international economic relations,” said Zaidan.
It is about having greater room to make independent decisions and avoiding excessive dependence on any single global power,” he said. Khalid pointed to China and Russia’s support for Lula, with Xi Jinping backing him against outside interference, and the Kremlin praising his work for the BRICS alliance. Burton said even countries and regions beyond the Global South are looking to lessen their reliance on Washington, including Europe, which is building its own security against Russia and in support of Ukraine.
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