Brazilian President Lula Inacio da Silva asserted that he was “chosen by God” to lead his country during his victory speech on Sunday, when he narrowly bested challenger Flávio Bolsonaro to win a fourth term as president.

“I owe this to you. I have always found that God was very generous with me, because there are so many people more prepared than me, with more diplomas than me, who have read more books than me. And why? Because I was chosen by God. I always found that I had God’s finger on my head,” Lula told the audience for his speech.

This theme of divine backing is not new to the Lula campaign. His wife, First Lady Janja da Silva, said Lula was the “true anointed of God” at a campaign event in September:

Lula also used his victory speech to reject President Donald Trump’s effort to restore the Monroe Doctrine in Latin America, insisting that Brazil “does not accept being anyone’s backyard.”

Lula’s win has been challenged by Bolsonaro and his allies, who said the incumbent president used a “dirty trick” to eke out a win by keeping the polls open for two extra hours in his electoral stronghold in northeastern Brazil.

“There’s a lot that needs to be cleared up before Brazil simply accepts this foul play that took place in these elections,” Bolsonaro said at a press conference in Brasilia on Sunday.

“What happened today was not something normal. It was something unacceptable. A Supreme Court justice, for the first time in history, former lawyer for Lula, signed a decree at the request of a former partner of his and changed the rules of the game in the middle of the game,’ he said.

 Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was reelected, securing a fourth term in office. (Omar Zaghloul/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Lula’s victory was the first time in Brazilian political history that the loser in the first round of the election came back to win the second round, and the first time the total number of votes counted in the second round was larger than the first. 

Lula collected a total of 10 million more votes in the second round than he did in the first, even though most of the candidates who dropped out were conservative. Also, his putative margin of victory on Sunday was roughly double what he scored when he defeated Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro, in the previous election.