At the time of the construction of the Brazilian capital, Juscelino Kubitschek, president from 1956 to 1961, had these words: “Brasília is the new dawn in the history of Brazil”. This sentence, passed on to posterity, gave its name to the residence of the presidents of the greatest power in Latin America, the Palace of Dawn, built by the architect Oscar Niemayer. The dawn, as a symbol of the beginning, while Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, 77, the victorious candidate (50.9% against 49.10%) of the Workers’ Party in the presidential election last October, officially goes take office on January 1, 2023 at a ceremony in Brasilia where 300,000 people and around fifteen heads of state and government are expected. But for day to rise, night must also fall.
And this is the question that is currently agitating the entire political class in Brazil: is this really the political twilight of Jair Bolsonaro, 67, the only president in the history of the country not to have been re-elected, but who has still managed to convince more than 58 million voters in the second round of the presidential election?
Brazilians demonstrate outside military barracks
For 40 days, Jair Bolsonaro remained as silent as his presidential agenda was desperately empty, leaving some doubt about his intentions for the future. Will the loser respect the verdict of the polls and allow this transition phase? “He played the sulky child card. But between his middle name Messias which means messiah and the nickname of mito (the myth) given to him by his supporters, Bolsonaro also tends to consider himself a divine envoy, which reinforces his incomprehension of the defeat”, underlines François-Michel Le Tourneau, research director at the CNRS and specialist in Brazil.
Since the election, the Bolsonarists have multiplied their attempts at destabilization: an explosive device placed in a tanker truck near Brasilia airport, vehicles set on fire during riots in Brasília, blocked roads, demonstrators camping in front of military barracks, asking the army to prevent Lula’s return… Certain politicians have moreover openly supported these movements. This is the case of Daniel Silveira, a deputy with muscles and a shaved head, known for having wished the judges of the Supreme Court to “get beaten up in the street”, sentenced to an eight-year prison term, then pardoned by the one he describes as “the greatest conservative leader in the world”. The member for Rio de Janeiro, who assures The Express being in very regular contact with Jair Bolsonaro, is still currently convinced that the ballot is “a fraud” and quite simply calls for a… “new election”.
The specter of a putsch in Brazil
Very quickly, the specter of the putsch and the military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985 resurfaced. But for the moment, those who advocate this scenario represent a minority fringe of Jair Bolsonaro’s electorate, “very radical”, “reactionary and libertarian”, analyzes Camila Rocha, doctor of political science and researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and planning (Cebrap), while the majority of the electorate – including evangelicals -, loyal to the outgoing president, sticks to his conservative motto: “God, fatherland, family”.
After this electoral setback, the Liberal Party (PL), the current political movement of Jair Bolsonaro, had even filed a complaint and pleaded for a revision of the result of the presidential election. A request rejected by the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) which had even condemned the PL to a heavy fine of nearly 4 million euros. “The electronic voting system in Brazil is the most advanced in the world, so Bolsonaro did not have a hold on the challenge. And then if we challenge, we challenge all the elected officials on his side”, analyzes François-Michel Le Tourneau . Clearly, the 99 deputies, 13 senators and 14 governors of his camp and who will make this Congress one of the most conservative in the history of the young Brazilian democracy.
Bolsonaro on the way to “trumpization”?
But what will Bolsonaro do now? Will he, as he had half-worded in the event of defeat, “stay in the background”? On January 1, the outgoing president finds himself de facto without warrant. One of the possibilities is to “continue to feed this whole radical digital ecosystem and to fake news on the Internet”, in a form of “trumpisation”, predicts Camila Rocha, doctor of political science, in order to be “eventually a recourse for 2026” if the champion of the South American left trips over the carpet.
But Jair Bolsonaro also finds himself facing the risk of being boarded up. A fringe of his electorate wants to turn the page on the excesses of the former artillery captain and would not be against forming alliances to obtain posts. Some figures like Tarcísio de Freitas, the new governor of São Paulo and supporter of Bolsonaro, as well as Sergio Moro, the anti-corruption judge and former justice minister of the outgoing president who put Lula in prison, harbor ambitions for 2026.
Even if Bolsonaro remains an “extremely popular leader” and Bolsonarism “a legacy that will endure” in Brazil, according to Camila Rocha, the former president also embodies the “politician” who spent 27 years in Congress as a deputy, with a record very weak legislation. Once in the highest office, he gave the feeling of being “a tourist of the presidential palace”, points out for his part François-Michel Le Tourneau who sees a fundamental difference with Trump. “The American president has a trajectory of winner. Bolsonaro is a second-class politician who has failed to change Brazilian law except for a few decrees. Even the financial circles are very disappointed. He ultimately did not deliver what was expected of him. The finding of incompetence was blatant”, further analyzes this specialist.
The Bolsonaro clan in the crosshairs of justice
Bolsonaro’s future will also depend on justice. The outgoing president has been the target of several investigations, in particular for disinformation, and of more than 150 requests for dismissal, most of them linked to his management of the Covid-19 crisis, which killed at least 685,000 people in Brazil. Until now, the president benefited from immunity but from January 1, he will be able to be tried by courts of first instance, and no longer only by the Supreme Court.
The entire Bolsonaro family is also in the crosshairs. At the end of 2020, the prosecution requested the indictment of the president’s eldest son, Flavio Bolsonaro, now a senator, for embezzlement and money laundering. He was suspected of, what is called in Brazil, “rachadinha” (employees of an elected official’s office, paid by the state, donate part of their salary to their employer). The case was finally dismissed last May after a higher court ruled that the investigation breached his parliamentary immunity. Brazilian media that investigated, however, showed that this practice was widespread within the Bolsonaro clan, including the father.
In total, according to the Uol news site, 51 properties were paid for entirely or partially in cash from 1990 to 2022 by members of the Bolsonaro family, for a total amount of nearly 4.8 million euros. Finally, President Bolsonaro has sealed, for a period of 100 years, a number of documents, official or personal, which could prove to be compromising. After having himself been sent to prison and then cleared, Lula, who has promised to make these documents public, may already have the future of Jair Bolsonaro in his hands.