Wise dress, brushing and neat makeup, Michelle Bolsonaro wipes away a tear on March 21. In duplex with Florida, where Jair Bolsonaro temporarily exiled himself after his defeat against Lula last fall, she pays tribute, 6000 kilometers away, to her husband, her “love” who “saved patriotism Brazilian”. That day, on the eve of her 41st birthday, the former first lady of Brazil was invested with great fanfare and in front of the cameras at the head of the women’s section of the Liberal Party (PL), the formation which houses the essential of the Bolsonaro clan. At this moment, the first party in parliament dubs a gifted and telegenic woman who could play a crucial role, if not the first, in the presidential election of 2026.
After a brief exchange on stage with a deaf person in the sign language she knows, Michelle, for an hour and a half, talks in front of the gratin of the extreme right, as comfortable at the microphone as on her high heels. . A fervent evangelical, she “thanks God for the gift of life”. Then she comes down from the podium to meet the public, hug one, kiss the other. Finally, she hails her “quasi-bru”, Heloisa, the wife of deputy Eduardo Bolsonaro, the third son of Jair, in a vain attempt to break the ice.
Standing behind his mother-in-law, the offspring of the ex-president remains impassive. His older brother Flavio, a PL senator, didn’t even come. Since the 2022 election campaign, which revealed the charisma of Michelle Bolsonaro, her political ambitions are no longer in doubt. Didn’t she dare to launch her own candidate for the Senate against that of her own husband, who was soundly beaten? More than ever, “01”, “02” and “03”, as Jair Bolsonaro calls his three sons born from a first marriage, and engaged like him in politics, are wary of this mother-in-law whom they do not carry not in their hearts, but whose prestige continues to grow.
She turns into a beautician
Their father also finds it difficult to hide his jealousy. “Stop praising my wife or I’m leaving the party!”, thunders the ex-president for example at the start of the year when the boss of the PL Valdemar Costa Neto throws at him: “If Jair becomes ineligible, we have Michelle!” . On June 27, the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) resumed examination of the Bolsonaro case, accused of having used his position to destabilize democracy, by discrediting the integrity of the electoral process with a group of ambassadors, by July 2022. The ex-president risks ineligibility.
But who to succeed the man who controls the Brazilian right? His sons don’t have the stuff. Given favorite, the former minister of Bolsonaro and current governor of São Paulo Tarcisio de Freitas, hesitates. “He knows that beating the official candidate will be difficult, especially if Lula were to stand again, analyzes anthropologist Rodrigo Toniol. It is therefore rather on Michelle that the political world will set its sights. The parties are eager to test its electoral potential. ”
This researcher feels it is “huge”. Especially since the many pans involving the family clan have no hold on her. Not even the diamond affair, a 1 million euro adornment offered by the Saudi regime to the first lady in November 2021. A possible return of favor, it is said, in exchange for the low-cost sale of an oil refinery in northern Brazil. Faced with speculation about her political future, the interested party plays it modest. “I’m here to help my husband’s party,” she tells the magazine Veja. No candidacy in sight, therefore, except perhaps “for a legislative mandate”, the only acceptable option for Jair Bolsonaro.
6.3 million Instagram followers!
However, no one is fooled. Michelle has long term ambitions. “She is preparing to be the candidate of Bolsonarism,” says Rodrigo Toniol, summing up the general feeling. And to underline “her curious game, which consists of getting closer to her husband, while stepping aside to mark her difference”. Michelle blows hot and cold. One day, she turns into a beautician and gives Jair facials with the cosmetics line she has just launched: the video has garnered 1.9 million likes among her 6.3 million Instagram followers! Another, she distances herself.
Recently, for example, she boasted of being “the only one in the family” to be vaccinated against Covid-19. A way of saying that she does not share her husband’s antivax convictions. The story of Michelle de Paula Firmino Reinaldo is that of millions of Brazilian women. Authentic daughter of the people – her father is a bus driver – she grew up in a disadvantaged suburb of Brasilia. Becoming a mother at a very young age, she raises her daughter alone, like countless heads of single-parent families.
To find the strength to face difficulties, Michelle becomes evangelical. In 2006, his path crossed that of Jair Bolsonaro in the Parliament of Brasilia. The young woman got a job there as a secretary. Twenty-seven years his senior, the former soldier was then a low-key deputy, best known for his verbal outrages against women, blacks, the poor, the left, homosexuals… They married the following year and a daughter, Laura, aged 12.
“Don’t look at my husband, look at me”
But today, their union is dysfunctional. He would have threatened to leave her if she seeks the presidency or an executive mandate. “Michelle does not have the experience”, he justifies, a bit macho. She would be ready to divorce to go her own way. “Third wife of Jair Bolsonaro, Michelle stands out from the two previous ones who depended on him for a career in politics, observes anthropologist Jacqueline Moraes Teixeira. In her case, it’s the opposite. It’s to her that Bolsonaro owes the support of evangelicals,” she recalls. This represents 70 million Brazilians, or a third of the population. “Don’t look at my husband, look at me, who am the servant of the Lord!” Implores Michelle Bolsonaro in full worship with the accents of a televangelist, one week before the second round. In other words, “she vouched for him, whom no one, and especially not the female electorate, deemed fit to govern”, continues Jacqueline Moraes Teixeira, who insists on “her active role, but gone unnoticed as first lady “.
For four years, like Eva Peron in Argentina in the 1940s, she criss-crossed poor regions to promote the government’s social policies. “Also, when she entered the campaign alongside Jair Bolsonaro, she already had the support of a modest public, often evangelical and feminine”, continues the researcher. “Michelle Bolsonaro is a manipulator who instrumentalizes faith, in line with this Christo-fascism at work in Brazil, criticizes feminist philosopher Marcia Tiburi. Being a woman has the advantage. She does not have need to say bad words or threaten to machine-gun everyone, like her husband does. But I have no doubt that she is trying to discredit our cause.”
The new president of the female section of the PL had initially campaigned for the abolition of the reserve of 30% of the budget that each party must legally devote to female candidates. Then she backtracked: “I rectify, I am for, but we want women in politics for their potential, not to fill quotas.” In any case, as a veteran of politics, Lula understood the danger: Michelle Bolsonaro is a phenomenon in the making, he believes. “This is why he discreetly prepares his own wife, Janja, to embody, as in a game of mirrors, a counter-model of a woman”, resumes Rodrigo Toniol. Faced with Michelle the conservative, Janja the progressive! Duel of first ladies in sight.