IT WAS THE PEOPLE! A COMEBACK AGAINST ALL THE DEMONS ON DUTY!
Lula wins his fourth term in a historic election marked by popular mobilization, a war of narratives and allegations of obstacles to the exercise of voting rights. The result exposes the limits of Big Tech power, receives the solidarity of Julian Assange and anti-fascist rocker Roger Waters, and confronts Brazil with an inescapable demand: investigate irregularities and apply the law.
Fernando Fagundes Ferreira ·
It was not the algorithms that had the last word. It was not the technology billionaires, the disinformation operators or the professionals of political manipulation. Nor was it the courts, the electoral strategists or the owners of the major media outlets.
The last word belonged to Brazilian citizens.
It was the people. And it was a comeback!
After losing the first round to Flávio Bolsonaro by more than two million votes, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva reversed the deficit and won his fourth presidential term, with approximately 51.8% of valid votes.
The result made history not only because of the electoral reversal, but also because of extraordinary popular participation. More than 128 million Brazilians went to the polls, approximately three million more than in the first round. Abstention fell from 21.08% to 19.21%, bucking the historical tendency for turnout to decline in the second round.
Millions of people decided to take part in a particularly closely contested election, facing polarization, accusations, disinformation and, in different cities, concrete difficulties in reaching polling places.
The result does not justify assuming that all these voters shared the same convictions. Democracy is precisely the space in which different choices, made for different reasons, produce a collective decision.
But one thing has been demonstrated: society participated more intensively at the decisive moment.
Popular mobilization need not be romanticized for its importance to be recognized. It must be understood as a concrete expression of democratic sovereignty.
And on this October 25, popular sovereignty spoke louder.
The people in the streets and the limits of Big Tech power
The electoral comeback raises anew a question Lawfare4All has been examining for years: does whoever controls the conditions under which information circulates also control the formation of the popular will?
Big Tech companies have come to occupy an extraordinary position in contemporary democracies. Their platforms organize the visibility of messages, manage recommendation systems, establish moderation criteria and influence the conditions under which millions of citizens encounter political information.
This concentration of communicational power is particularly problematic because much of its machinery remains inaccessible to public scrutiny.
Algorithms can amplify content that provokes outrage, reward polarization and favor emotionally mobilizing messages, without necessarily prioritizing the quality of information.
The result can be a public sphere in which citizens have enormous quantities of content at their disposal, yet face growing difficulties in understanding relevant events.
Lawfare4All identifies in this phenomenon one of the central contradictions of digital democracy: never has so much information circulated, but informational abundance does not ensure public understanding.
The 2026 election offers a powerful image of this tension.
On one side, private structures capable of distributing messages on a planetary scale. On the other, citizens organizing mobilizations, talking, taking part in in-person demonstrations, helping other voters and going to the polls.
It is in this political sense that the comeback can be interpreted as a victory of the people in the streets in the face of Big Tech power.
Not because it has been proven that all platforms acted in coordination against Lula, nor because electoral data allow the change in the result to be attributed exclusively to in-person mobilization. Those would be conclusions requiring investigations and evidence of their own.
The victory lies in demonstrating the limits of that power.
Big Tech can organize the circulation of messages. It does not have the right to organize popular sovereignty.
The difference is decisive.
Private companies cannot replace democratic institutions in defining the conditions of political participation, nor exert influence over the informational environment without transparency, accountability and respect for fundamental rights.
The election is over. The concentration of communicational power remains.
The electoral result does not solve this problem, but it offers an opportunity to address it with greater clarity.
Popular sovereignty is not the property of platforms.
They tried to obstruct even the journey to the polls
The most worrying episode this Sunday occurred in the streets and at bus stops in Brazilian cities where voters faced difficulties reaching their polling stations.
The Ministry of Justice identified failures in public transport provision in eight states: Bahia, São Paulo, Piauí, Sergipe, Pará, Alagoas, Rio de Janeiro and Paraíba.
In Salvador, the fleet operated with less than half the planned number of vehicles. There were reports of vehicles parked in depots, prolonged waits and court decisions ordering services to be restored.
The seriousness of these occurrences led Lula's campaign to appeal to the Federal Supreme Court. Justice Cristiano Zanin ordered voting hours to be extended until 7 p.m., a measure subsequently limited to polling stations that were still open.
The clarification arose from the technical impossibility of reopening electronic voting machines that had already been closed, exposing the difficulties of providing an effective institutional response to problems arising in the final hours of voting.
The Federal Police opened investigations into possible crimes involving the prevention or obstruction of the exercise of voting rights, including suspicions that public transport vehicles had been withheld.
It has not been demonstrated that all these occurrences formed part of a nationally coordinated criminal operation. Nor is it possible to attribute responsibility for them in advance to a particular candidacy.
But the known facts are sufficient to demand answers.
Who ordered the reduction of fleets? Which managers and companies failed to fulfill their obligations? Was there a deliberate intention to make voters' journeys more difficult? How many people were prevented from exercising their right to vote? Which authorities knew of the restrictions, and what steps did they take?
Democracy is not limited to the security of electronic voting machines.
The right to vote begins before the voting booth. It begins with citizens' concrete ability to reach it.
The election result does not eliminate the need to establish whether that right was deliberately restricted.
The war of narratives and the manufacture of public incomprehension
Throughout the campaign, Lawfare4All followed different manifestations of a structural problem: the progressive replacement of informed political debate with a permanent competition for control of attention.
The cancellation of TV Globo's presidential debate, the judicial controversies that preceded it and the growing use of individual interviews, podcasts and candidates' own broadcasts demonstrated the importance of the conditions under which the public is offered an opportunity to hear opposing positions.
The accusations related to Banco Master also revealed the difficulties of turning complex information involving financial, political and institutional actors into comprehensible explanations.
Serious allegations do not become true because of how often they are repeated. Likewise, they do not cease to merit investigation because different actors seek to use them for their own benefit.
The problem lies in the distance between the circulation of accusations and the understanding of facts.
This deficiency was present even in the presidential confrontations.
After the October 18 debate, Lawfare4All drew attention to Lula's insistence on demanding explanations from his opponent without always providing the public with the context necessary to understand the seriousness of the issues raised.
A question addressed to an opponent can be politically forceful, but it does not replace the obligation to inform voters.
Those watching a debate should not need prior knowledge of all the documents, investigations and controversies mentioned by candidates in order to understand what is being discussed.
Political communication loses its public dimension when it turns relevant information into passwords recognizable only to the activists most involved in the contest.
And this problem worsens in a digital environment in which the most emotionally stimulating fragment can circulate far more widely than the explanation needed to interpret it.
Electoral victory does not eliminate this deficiency.
Brazilian democracy will continue to need institutions, media outlets and platforms capable of providing verifiable, contextualized and intelligible information.
Julian Assange: solidarity has a memory
On the eve of voting, Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, declared his support for Lula's reelection and recalled the 1,901 days he spent imprisoned in the United Kingdom.
Assange highlighted the Brazilian president's efforts in defense of his freedom and criticized Jair and Flávio Bolsonaro, contrasting their positions with the solidarity he received from Lula.
For Lawfare4All, his statement has a special meaning.
Julian Assange is someone whose judicial persecution and struggle for freedom of information Lawfare4All has followed and denounced for years. Our solidarity did not begin with his electoral endorsement and does not depend on it.
The founder of WikiLeaks became an international reference point in controversies over government secrecy, investigative journalism, the disclosure of confidential documents and the use of the state apparatus against the circulation of information in the public interest.
His long deprivation of liberty and the successive legal disputes related to extradition to the United States demonstrated the scale a conflict over the publication of information can reach when confronted with governmental interests.
The Assange case transcended the boundaries of an individual controversy and became part of the international debate about the risks faced by journalists, sources and whistleblowers.
Lawfare4All's editorial position is unequivocal.
Lawfare4All fully agrees with Julian Assange's positions and recognizes the historical importance of his struggle for freedom of information, transparency of power and the procedural guarantees that should protect every person.
This solidarity is part of our understanding of the risks of instrumentalizing the judicial system to shield power structures from public scrutiny.
Assange's statement on the eve of the election brought to the Brazilian contest the experience of someone who personally knew the prolonged effects of judicial persecution and recognized in Lula an ally of his freedom.
Solidarity has a history. Freedom of information has political consequences. And the memory of abuses of power cannot depend on the convenience of each election.
Roger Waters: the warrior rocker against fascism and neo-fascism
Roger Waters, cofounder of Pink Floyd, transformed his artistic career into a permanent platform of political contestation.
The warrior rocker turned his attention to Brazil and, in a video released on October 20, declared support for Lula's reelection, harshly criticized Flávio Bolsonaro and called on Brazilians to participate in the second round.
Waters connected his position to Brazilian sovereignty and the influence of the United States over the country's natural resources.
His statement also recalled a feature of his career: publicly confronting movements and practices that he identifies with fascism, neo-fascism, militarism and authoritarianism.
Historical fascism belongs to the twentieth century, but debates over its contemporary manifestations occupy a growing space in twenty-first-century politics.
Neo-fascism is a category whose application requires historical rigor. Its characteristics discussed in the literature include authoritarian tendencies, exclusionary nationalisms, hostility to pluralism and the transformation of opponents into enemies to be symbolically eliminated from the political community.
Identifying these characteristics in specific movements cannot depend solely on insults or rhetorical analogies.
Waters takes part in this debate as an artist and activist, with public positions that elicit both support and controversy.
His work, especially in projects such as Animals and The Wall, explored themes related to power, alienation and mechanisms of social control.
Decades later, the musician continues to bring these concerns into his political statements.
There was a particularly significant detail in his appeal to the Brazilian electorate.
Waters called on relatives and friends to help people with mobility difficulties reach the polls, advocating massive electoral participation.
Five days later, Brazil would face precisely difficulties in public transport during voting.
There is no evidence that the musician had advance knowledge of these events. His statement, however, highlighted an essential problem: citizenship requires material conditions in order to be exercised.
Lawfare4All recognizes in Waters an artist who maintains a public trajectory of opposition to authoritarianism and participation in international political causes.
The musician who helped build The Wall continues to question the physical, political and symbolic walls that divide societies.
Assange and Waters arrived at the Brazilian election by different paths.
One, through the experience of judicial persecution and the defense of freedom of information. The other, through artistic activism and his declared opposition to fascism and contemporary forms of authoritarianism.
Both expressed solidarity with Lula.
But neither replaced the Brazilian voter.
Solidarity came from abroad. The decision came from the streets.
It would be a mistake to attribute the electoral comeback exclusively to international statements, in-person mobilization, digital communication or a particular party strategy.
The change in the result arose from the individual choices of millions of citizens, whose motivations cannot be reduced to a single explanation.
There is, however, an objective element of enormous significance: participation increased.
In an election marked by intense political confrontation, more Brazilians decided to go to the polls.
This result also deserves to be analyzed as an expression of the capacity for social mobilization in a democracy permeated by private systems of information distribution.
Digital platforms influence the political environment, but they do not replace social relationships, collective organization and the material exercise of rights.
The people in the streets did not eliminate Big Tech power.
They demonstrated the limits of any attempt to confuse that power with democratic sovereignty.
The algorithm distributes messages. The people make decisions.
This distinction will remain fundamental after the election, when Brazilian society must discuss algorithmic transparency, platform responsibility, freedom of expression and democratic mechanisms of regulation.
Electoral victory is not an automatic solution to these challenges.
It is an opportunity to place them once again under public responsibility.
Now it is the law's turn. No revenge, no shielding and no impunity.
Flávio Bolsonaro's defeat does not automatically make him guilty of any crime. But the millions of votes he received do not grant him legal immunity either.
The same rule applies to members of the reelected government, businesspeople, administrative authorities, party leaders and anyone involved in proven irregularities.
The allegations concerning restrictions on public transport require investigation. Possible abuses of authority need to be clarified. Well-founded suspicions of illicit financing and criminal practices related to disinformation must also be examined by the competent institutions.
The end of the electoral campaign does not authorize these events to be forgotten.
Investigations cannot advance because someone lost an election, nor be halted because someone won.
If there are sufficient grounds to bring charges, the appropriate accusations should be presented. If there is evidence capable of supporting convictions, the consequences provided for in legislation should be applied. And if the legal requirements for a precautionary measure are met, the judiciary should issue a reasoned decision.
Accountability cannot dispense with due process of law.
The reelected president has no constitutional authority to order the imprisonment of opponents, just as he cannot protect allies from legitimate investigations.
The true independence of the judicial system manifests itself in the application of equal legal criteria, regardless of the identity of the person under investigation.
The ballot box is not a court. And the court is not a ballot box.
Popular sovereignty chooses rulers; it does not distribute acquittals.
It is precisely this distinction that makes it possible to demand justice without reproducing the mechanisms of political persecution that Lawfare4All itself examines and denounces.
Brazil does not need to replace the persecuted with the persecutors.
It needs to prevent anyone from being persecuted or protected because of their political position.
The demons on duty did not have the last word
Lula's victory does not mean Brazil's democratic problems have been solved.
Economic power will continue to compete for influence. Big Tech will continue to control fundamental communication infrastructures. Disinformation will continue to pose challenges to public intelligibility. And institutions will need to demonstrate that they can guarantee rights without distinguishing winners from losers.
The allegations related to electoral transport continue to await clarification and possible accountability.
The election is over, but democratic obligations continue.
Even so, there is something extraordinary to recognize on this October 25.
After losing the first round by more than two million votes, Lula reversed the deficit in an election with growing participation, marked by intense political dispute and concrete difficulties on voting day itself.
Julian Assange expressed the solidarity of someone who knows the consequences of judicial persecution. Roger Waters, the warrior rocker, called Brazilians to the polls and reaffirmed his trajectory of anti-fascist activism.
But the decisive image is not in London, on international stages, in the courts or in Big Tech's processing centers.
It is in the Brazilian streets.
In the citizen who left home to vote. In the people who faced difficulties traveling. In the voters who reported irregularities. In those who helped relatives and friends reach polling stations.
The legitimacy of the decision did not come from algorithms, celebrities or centers of power.
It came from the vote.
It was the people. It was at the polls. And it was a comeback!
The demons on duty did not have the last word.
The people did.
Electoral victory did not extinguish disinformation, dissolve Big Tech power or eliminate contemporary threats to democracy.
But it demonstrated that none of these forces has a monopoly over political decision-making.
From now on, it is up to institutions to investigate irregularities, ensure the application of the law and guarantee that popular sovereignty remains protected against illegitimate interference.
The people decided the election. Now the law must reach everyone who has violated their rights.
No revenge. No shielding. No impunity.
LULA REELECTED. THE PEOPLE AS PROTAGONISTS. THE LAW FOR ALL.
Lawfare is for everyone. Justice is not.