Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro will face each other in a second round of the presidential elections, since neither candidate has exceeded 50 percent of the votes in this first round that was held this Sunday in Brazil.

With 97.07 percent of the votes counted, Lula da Silva, leader of the Workers’ Party, emerged as the winner of the first round, obtaining 47.88 percent of the ballots — more than 54, 8 million votes–.

Meanwhile, the current outgoing president and leader of the Liberal Party, Bolsonaro, has obtained 43.68 percent –more than 49.7 million voters–, according to data released by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

The difference between the two main candidates is reduced to just over four percentage points, as indicated by the count of practically all the ballot boxes.

After the former president of the country had been behind Bolsonaro during half of the count, Lula has managed to overtake his rival. Despite this, both have remained close to the 50 percent necessary to avoid the second round.

Pre-election polls placed Lula well ahead of his opponent, even predicting that he would win the presidency in the first round.

Simone Tebet, in third place, got 4.22 percent of the votes. For his part, Ciro Gomes, in fourth place, obtained 3.06 percent.

The judge who imprisoned Lula

Former Judge Sergio Moro, who in his time as a magistrate imprisoned former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and later served as Minister of Justice in the Government of Jair Bolsonaro, won a seat in the Brazilian Senate in the legislative elections this Sunday.

Moro, the former symbol of the fight against corruption in Brazil, even wanted to run for the presidential elections, but finally his party, Unión Brasil, forced him to desist; and today he prevailed with 33.7% of the votes for the state of Paraná (south), with 98.2% of the polls counted.

The former judge was ahead of Paulo Martins, who was the closest candidate to Bolsonaro (29.1%); Álvaro Dias (23.9%); and Rosane Ferreira (8.0%).

Moro obtained the seat that was disputed in the state of Paraná, from where he judged in the first instance the cases of Operation Lava Jato, which in 2014 uncovered a corruption plot in the state-owned Petrobras, and imprisoned businessmen and politicians, including Lula, who spent 580 days in prison.

Another of his allies in Lava Jato, the then coordinating prosecutor of that operation, Deltan Dallagnol, was elected federal deputy, being the most voted from Paraná, even ahead of the president of the PT, Gleisi Hoffmann, according to official results.

Moro’s wife, Rosângela Moro, who is a candidate for federal deputy for the state of São Paulo, is also running in these legislative elections.

Operation Lava Jato fell into disgrace from the moment the Supreme Court annulled many of these processes due to jurisdictional problems and, in addition, declared that Moro was not “impartial” in cases brought against Lula, who will presumably dispute a second round of the presidential ones before Bolsonaro.