The Brazilian right-wing extremist Jair Messias Bolsonaro, 68, returned home this Wednesday from Orlando (Florida), where he has been since the end of December. The former president returns with intentions to lead Brazil’s right and lead the opposition to his successor at the helm, leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 77, but his scope will depend on how many investigations he develops open. First, on the 5th, the police summoned him to testify about some jewels that the Saudi royal family had given him and which he had taken home irregularly. Bolsonaro landed in Brasilia on a scheduled flight early in the morning. For the first time in three decades of his political career, he has no immunity.
Hours later, Bolsonaro warned: “I don’t have a job, but I’m not retired.” The ultra stars are in an unprecedented situation in Brazil because the most common among their predecessors was to achieve a second term and then leave the first political line upon completion.
“We will ensure that the personnel in power now and for a short time cannot do what they want with our nation,” he said at his party’s headquarters in Brasilia. The Liberal Party, with which the retired soldier ran in the elections, dominates Congress. During those three months, the ex-president has devoted himself to the life of a normal citizen, with visits to hamburger restaurants, shops and sporadic public events: one featuring Donald Trump and the others aimed at his countrymen.
Bolsonaro, who never came to concede defeat in the elections, made a surprise departure for the United States on December 30 in a trip that no one announced in advance. In this way he avoided taking part in the ceremonial transfer of power to his successor. A week after the leader of the Brazilian left took office as president, a group of Bolsonarists launched the most violent attack Brazilian democracy has suffered in decades by attacking the headquarters of Congress, the presidency and the Supreme Court. Among the various cases in which he is being investigated by courts and police are charges of facilitating the attack that rocked Brazilian democracy for three hours. This Thursday he insisted the invasion “was spontaneous”
The latest allegation against Bolsonaro has to do with some valuable diamond jewelery (worth more than three million euros), a gift from the royal family of Saudi Arabia, which did not explain itself as it should and tried to stick to a gesture , which has tarnished the image of a man of integrity that he maintains among his faithful. But he is also being investigated in various instances for spreading untruths about electronic ballot boxes, for irresponsibly handling the pandemic, for alleged genocide of indigenous peoples, etc. In Brazil, the courts are more likely to ban him from voting for eight years than imprison him.
Bolsonaro, surrounded by police officers, greets his supporters in Brasilia this Thursday.EVARISTO JULIANO DE SA EVARISTO SA (AFP)
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A few hundred fans, fewer than expected and dressed in football shirts, came to the airport to receive him. Bolsonaro’s plane landed at 6:38 a.m. (local time, five more hours in mainland Spain), slightly ahead of schedule. He and his group wanted a massive reception at the airport facilities, but police and authorities decided that for safety reasons it was better to avoid any riots. The far-right left the airport in a police car and with a police escort in his capacity as a former president and drove to the Liberal Party headquarters to meet his children, his wife Michelle Bolsonaro, who has just boarded, and who is beginning his own political career with like-minded parliamentarians. The head of the clan has indicated that speculation that his wife could become his successor has been exaggerated.
Ex-President Bolsonaro announced a week ago that he would definitely return this Thursday. So he has landed when Lula will complete the first three months of a mandate that started extremely frantically and is not yet having an impact. Lula is in Brasilia and not on an official visit to China as originally planned because pneumonia forced him to cancel at the last minute his most important trip to date, which included a meeting with his counterpart Xi Jinping.
In less than 100 days, Brazil witnessed a Bolsonarist attack on institutions in Brasilia that looked like a replica of the attack on the Capitol and ended with 1,500 arrested. This invasion followed Lula’s decision to fire the army chief for lack of confidence. And the current president, who narrowly won Brazil’s closest elections in history, is facing significant difficulties in forming a parliamentary majority and completing plans to revitalize the economy. This Friday also marks the anniversary of the 1964 military coup, a date officially commemorated in the barracks when Bolsonaro became president.
True to his form, Bolsonaro has made ambivalent statements about his future. “I will not lead any opposition,” he declared on the eve of his return to CNN Brazil. But he has also stated his intention to “tour Brazil, do politics” flying the flag of the conservative right, which was a powerful political movement during his tenure. But the defeat by fewer than two million votes and after voicing a million doubts about the electoral system without any evidence left Bolsonaro shocked and depressed. From election night until the end of his term, he disappeared from the public stage, immersing himself in near-absolute silence while thousands of his supporters camped outside barracks across the country, demanding that the military intervene to prevent Lula from taking the reins of the country accepts a third term.
The airliner in which former President Bolsonaro arrived in Brasilia this Thursday from Florida, where he has been based since falling from power. Luis Nova (EFE)
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