Lula celebrates runoff win with ecstatic supporters

Brazilians delivered a very tight victory to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a bitter runoff election on Sunday.

Da Silva received 50.9% of the vote and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro 49.1%, according to the country’s election authority.

Voters gave the leftist former president another shot at power in a rejection of Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right politics.

"People must stop suffering," da Silva said before a huge crowd of supporters in downtown Sao Paulo.

"It's not fair for a people so kind, so affectionate, a population that likes music, like samba, happy people, to suffer so much because of a fascist government".

For da Silva, the high-stakes election was a stunning comeback.

His imprisonment for corruption sidelined him from the 2018 election.

That vote was won by Bolsonaro, who has used the presidency to promote conservative social values while also delivering incendiary speeches and testing democratic institutions.

Hours after the results were in - and congratulations for Lula poured in from world leaders - Bolsonaro had yet to publicly concede or react in any way.