EDITORIAL: The political fortunes of US President Donald Trump’s preferred candidates are beginning to resemble a rather unreliable investment portfolio: plenty of noise, extravagant promises, and increasingly disappointing returns. Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has now delivered another reminder that voters do not always follow the script written in Washington.
At an age when most politicians would be contemplating retirement, Lula, turning 81 on Election Day, has pulled off a remarkable comeback, securing an unprecedented fourth presidential term with 51.8 percent of the vote against 48.2 percent for Flavio Bolsonaro, son of Brazil’s imprisoned former president, and strongly favoured by Washington and Tel Aviv. The margin was not enormous, but the message was unmistakable: Brazil’s electorate was not prepared to surrender its democratic choice to a right-wing campaign backed by the political winds blowing from the United States.
The irony is delicious. President Trump has cultivated the image of a global kingmaker, dispensing endorsements — the most recent one for his friend Benjamin Netanyahu - as though they were electoral gold.
Yet his political touch abroad seems increasingly capable of turning gold into lead. His favoured candidates may enjoy the publicity, the rallies and the flattering attention of powerful visitors, but the voters retain the inconvenient habit of making up their own minds.
Consider Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the veteran autocrat who cultivated a close relationship with Trump and became something of a patron saint for the international far right. Even the extraordinary spectacle of US Vice-President JD Vance travelling all the way to Hungary to demonstrate support could not guarantee the desired result. Orbán’s defeat was a pointed reminder that an endorsement from Washington is no substitute for public confidence at home.
Serbia, too, has offered a lesson in the limits of political patronage, as Aleksandar Vucic and his political camp have faced mounting public resistance and electoral defeat. The precise circumstances differ from country to country, but the broader message is striking: no leader, however powerful their foreign friends, can indefinitely insulate themselves from the verdict of their own people.
Brazil’s election carries particular significance because Lula’s victory comes amid a wider rightward shift in parts of Latin America. It also reasserts the importance of national sovereignty in an era when Washington’s political preferences can be accompanied by formidable diplomatic and economic pressure.
Lula’s declaration that Brazil would not accept being anybody’s backyard was more than campaign rhetoric; it was an assertion that independent nations are not franchises of foreign powers. Democracy is not a contest in which foreign endorsements determine the winner.
Perhaps Trump’s political advisers should reconsider their strategy. Their endorsements are becoming less like a golden ticket and more like a warning label. The final irony is that the strongest antidote to political strongmen may be the one thing they fear most: voters who refuse to be told how to vote.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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