Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner could not have said it in better fashion: “Brazil has the face of a woman,” she wrote on her Twitter account on Sunday night when the results of the Brazilian federal election started streaming out of Brasilia.

Many countries have started to lean towards female leaders during the past decade. Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Helen Clarke in New Zealand, Angela Merkel in Germany, Cristina Fernandez in Argentina, our own Julia Gillard and now Dilma Rousseff in Latin America’s giant, Brazil.

The new wave of female political leaders is not the only coincidence to come out of the samba-loving country. Just like in the Australian election a little over six weeks ago, the Greens party of Brazil — also led by a woman, Marina Silva — brought home a result no one predicted before the election, even surprising many party insiders.

The vast majority of opinion polls in the final weeks before election day gave the presidency to Dilma Rousseff, presidential candidate of the Partido dos Trabalhadores, Portuguese for Worker’s Party, known more commonly as the PT.

She won the race in last Sunday’s presidential election, gaining 46.9% of the vote. However, she did not harvest the 50% needed to become the first woman elected to govern Brazil. She will face centre-right candidate Jose Serra — who came in second with 32.6% — in the run-off to be held on Sunday, October 31.

To understand the result of last weekend’s election in Brazil, you can’t go past the fascinating figure of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in this episode — as most in recent Brazilian history — plays a prominent role. This is the first time that Lula isn’t running for the presidency since democracy returned to Brazil in 1985 — the Brazilian constitution only allows one re-election — and yet, he still manages to take centre stage.

It was he who built the coalition that gave Dilma (as with their football stars, Brazilians refer to their politicians only by their Christian names or even their nicknames) the victory, through alliances with diverse parties that don’t necessarily share the same views as Lula, but at the end of the day support the prosperous model for Brazil that Lula has conceived in his years in power.

A clear example of this is in the crucial state of São Paulo where Lula saw the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (Partido do Movimento Democrático Brasileiro) — a big tent party that includes conservatives, liberals, populists and even former members of the guerrilla movement, among others — to have more of a chance of triumphing than the PT and endorsed them instead.

President Lula certainly took advantage of his stainless steel popularity. After seven years and 10 months of government, he has an approval rate of 85% among Brazilians.

Lula was the clear leader in Dilma’s campaign, closing every campaign event with a speech, exclaiming to his constituents that she was his successor. On poll day, he flew straight to Brasilia after voting in São Paolo, publicly showing himself beside his successor, awaiting the results.

Everyone wants to piggy-back on Lula’s popularity. Amusingly, Lula wasn’t absent in Jose Serra’s campaign either, appearing in his television campaign ads and even in his official campaign jingle, in an intent to convince the public that Lula is their leader as well.

To Lula, the profound debate during this Presidential campaign was his battle against the hegemonic mainstream Brazilian media with both sides accusing each other of abusing power, the Lula versus Media showdown many times relegating candidates to a secondary role.

Despite firm opposition from the mainstream media, Dilma Rousseff came out victorious, much to Lula’s merit.

Just like many turned to the likes of Bob Brown and Adam Bandt in our election on August 21, the environment and the PT’s disinterest in this matter was certainly an issue that caused millions of PT voters to turn green, upsetting the direct triumph and presidency for Dilma, setting up the unexpected run-off election.

Marina has a long history defending the Amazon. She was also a member of the PT for more than 30 years and was a part of Lula’s inaugural cabinet in 2002 as environment minister but left the government six years later. The reason she resigned then may come back to haunt Dilma in this process. Under Lula’s orders, Dilma was heavily campaigning the implementation of massive hydro-electric dams at the time, which were highly condemned by Marina and environmental organisations.

In recent years, the Greens have worked very closely with the centre-right, something Serra is certainly looking to capitalise on in the lead-up to the run-off election. However, Marina’s historic left-wing stance — she too was a trade union activist in the 1970s and ’80s — could alienate the far-right factions on Serra’s end and their connections to the Agrobusiness sector.

Marina will publicly announce who she will endorse on October 17 but has already made very clear the fact that she could remain neutral.

Lula hand-picked Dilma as his successor, as his candidate. Dilma, his loyal and low-profile chief of staff who had never contested a single election before, who has never been linked to the leadership of her party, was practically an unknown figure to the electorate and to a certain extent, she still is. This is probably why she didn’t reach the 50% needed to become president last Sunday. Marina Silva’s memorable election certainly stopped her getting there too.

She now has another opportunity — another four weeks of heavy campaigning across the Amazon, along the famous Brazilian coastline — to prove that she genuinely is Lula’s successor.

Lula’s strong presence in her campaign won her the election but it just was not enough.

It’s as if Brazilians, ballot paper in hand, had suddenly realised that the name of Lula da Silva’s wasn’t on there this time round.