RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's newly-elected lawmakers took office on Friday and will elect new heads of both houses during the day.
Brazil's Chamber of Deputies (lower house) has 513 members elected for a four-year mandate. The Federal Senate (upper house) has 81 members who are elected for terms of eight years, but every four years there are new elections: once for one third of the seats and the next time for the remaining two thirds. In 2018, Brazilians elected two-thirds of senators.
The latest election was marked by controversies and polarization, and this was reflected in a high number of newcomers elected to the Chamber of Deputies: out of the 513 members, 244 have been elected for their first congressional term.
The figures represent 47.6 percent of newcomers, the highest share registered since the election for the Constitutional Assembly in 1986. Since 1994 the lower house did not have more than 40 percent of newcomers.
In addition to a larger number of newcomers, the participation of women in the lower house has also increased, with 77 women elected as federal deputies, compared to 51 in the previous term.
The figures, which represent 15 percent of the total number of federal deputies, are record high, but remain much below the share of women in the Brazilian population, which is 51 percent.
Both the oldest and youngest elected federal deputies are women: newcomer Luisa Canziani, from Parana state, is 22, and Luiza Erundina, who has been elected for her fifth consecutive term and before that, served as mayor of Brazil's largest city Sao Paulo, is 84 years old.
The share of women in the Federal Senate also reached 15 percent, with 12 women in the position.
Thirty political parties have elected representatives for the Congress. The Social Liberal Party, to which President Jair Bolsonaro is affiliated, took advantage of the president's popularity and managed to elect 52 federal deputies.
On the other hand, the Workers' Party, which lost the presidential election, managed to elect the largest number of federal deputies in the lower house, and already stated their intention of making a strong opposition to Bolsonaro's administration.
