Fernando Haddad is a Brazilian academic and politician who served as Mayor of São Paulo from 2013 to 2017. He was the Workers' Party candidate for President of Brazil in the 2018 election, replacing former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose candidacy was barred by the Superior Electoral Court under the Clean Slate law. Haddad faced Jair Bolsonaro in the run-off of the election, and lost the election with 44.87% of the votes against the 55.13% of Bolsonaro.
Haddad is of ethnic Assyrian origin, belonging to the Antiochian Syriac Orthodox. He studied law, economics and philosophy at the University of São Paulo. He was Minister of Education from 2005 to 2012 in the cabinets of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff.