By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

Brazil is again on the straight path with the defeat in the presidential elections of the US protégé, incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, who destroyed the country’s health, economy, culture, ecology, and the political landscape.
Call him leftist in the jargon of the capitalist West or any other term you like, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is the right man to lead Brazil and deliver it from the mess his predecessor has plunged the country into.
A person who served two terms as president, Lula (as he is popularly called), has now become the chief executive for the 3rd time – a record in the history of Latin America’s largest country and the world’s 5th largest with a population of over 217 million.
A level-headed politician, during his previous terms, he is credited with lifting some 30 million Brazilians out of poverty.
Now with his comeback he is faced with fresh challenges because of the chaos into which the US-backed Bolsonaro has pushed Brazil, where today some fifteen percent go to bed hungry and the economy is on a steep slide.
Like all other politicians around the world, Bolsonaro was a racist, a sexist and a homophobic, whose divisive policies has led to his defeat in the presidential elections, despite the heavy rigging in his favour by the state apparatus to try to keep him in power.
He is responsible for Brazil’s huge coronavirus pandemic death toll of nearly 700,000 people, in addition to his wanton destruction of the Amazon rainforest, which has caused irreparable damage to not only Latin America’s ecology but also of the world.
The Brazilian people are now jubilant at the victory of the tried and trusted Lula who is not only popular in his homeland or Latin America but throughout the free world as well because of his pragmatic policies and strong opposition to US hegemony.
We in the Islamic Republic remember his trip to Iran as president and the honour of being granted an audience with the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, with whose farsightedness, knowledge, political prudence, dedication to the welfare of the Iranian people and to Iran’s integrity and progress, as well as correct evaluation of international equations, he was greatly impressed.
Lula, who is to be formally sworn in as Brazil’s new president, is welcome again to Tehran at the earliest opportunity to discuss matters of mutual interest, ranging from strengthening of bilateral ties to cooperation in Latin America, international relations, and of course, the chronic question of Palestine.
It is worth recalling that Lula had officially recognized Palestine as a sovereign independent state languishing under the occupation of the Zionists, to the horror of the illegal entity called Israel, and its godfather, the US.
Today the political landscape in Latin America has positively changed as is evident in the fall of pro-US regimes in several countries, including in Colombia for the first time in that country’s history.
Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua, the bastions of independence against US encroachment, as well as Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and others welcome Brazil to their ranks and view the victory of Lula – who has fought and defeated throat cancer and the false charges that had put him in prison – as a triumph for the whole of Latin America.