Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro surprised even his supporters by returning to Brazil at dawn this Thursday after a three-month self-imposed exile in Florida following his electoral loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last October.
Bolsonaro boarded a Gol airline flight on Wednesday night for Brasilia, where he was received by a small group of supporters and continued on to the headquarters of his organization, the Liberal Party, confirmed the CNN/Brazil chain.
His plans, said members of his entourage, is to seek a new role in politics. The return, observers pointed out, has put the authorities on alert regarding the eventual impact that their presence will have on the mobilization of the opposition that follows the far-right populist leader.
Hundreds of supporters dressed in Brazil’s national colors of yellow and green chanted for Bolsonaro as they awaited his arrival, but his return did not draw the large crowds many of his allies expected.
The former president said in his first speech that his left-wing successor and his allies “will not do what they want for the fate of our nation,” adding that the left will only hold power “for now, for a while.”
Speaking in front of a banner that read “Brazil woke up stronger today,” Bolsonaro stressed that he will spend as much time as necessary at the headquarters of his Liberal Party to help campaign for next year’s municipal elections when the country elects 5 500 mayors.
Bolsonaro left Brazil at the end of December just before the end of his presidential term. In doing so, he broke with tradition by refusing to hand over the presidential sash to his successor, who won the closest election since Brazil’s return to democracy more than three decades ago.
He said that his three months in Florida helped him to have a vision of the future. “Everything we saw there is what we want to implement here. The most important thing is freedom.”
For the first time in 30 years, the former senator turned president is not holding elected office.
“I come here in the position of an elder, an experienced person who will be consulted by whoever wishes. I will give opinions,” Bolsonaro stressed. “We are not in the opposition. We are in favor of Brazil”.
Bolsonaro is the subject of several investigations that could hinder any attempt at a political comeback and arrived in the capital under tight security. The authorities tried to prevent a repeat of the events of January 8, when supporters who did not accept his defeat stormed government buildings. The Brasilia police blocked the main road to those buildings and took more than a day to evict the occupants.
While in the United States, Bolsonaro kept a low profile, though he made several speeches to conservative Brazilian immigrants, including at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.
Bolsonaro’s efforts to return to the political front line could be hampered by several investigations, including one into whether he instigated the January 8 uprising. recent diary revelations Sao Paulo State over three boxes of valuable jewelry allegedly given to Bolsonaro by Saudi Arabia have exposed him to further legal risk.
His return to Brazil has been delayed several times. Some had speculated that he could put it off indefinitely given his legal problems. Steve Bannon, a former Trump ally and considered a strategist for the global right, told the Brazilian newspaper this week Folha de Sao Paulo that Bolsonaro should never have left the country, and downplayed the investigations.
Now that Bolsonaro is back, his first goal will be to mobilize opposition to Lula’s government, said Mayra Goulard da Silva, a political scientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. “Bolsonaro decided to return to Brazil because a clear leader in opposition to the government has not appeared,” said the analyst. Otherwise, she noted, “the gap could have been filled by someone else.”
Next year’s municipal elections are an important step to gain political momentum ahead of a possible presidential campaign in 2026. Bolsonaro is expected to back mayoral candidates from the Liberal Party who, if successful, can then use his position to bolster him. .
In addition to the diamond investigations, Bolsonaro is the subject of a dozen investigations for his actions in last year’s election campaign, especially for his unsubstantiated claims that the electronic voting system was vulnerable to fraud. If he is convicted in any of those cases, he would be politically disqualified from running in the next elections.
