After losing the 2022 presidential election in Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro traveled with his family to the United States for a “sabbatical”, on December 30. So he didn’t participate in the democratic rite of passing the presidential sash to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on January 1st.
Without Bolsonaro’s presence in Brazil, some troubled situations happened in the first trimester of 2023, like the episode of January 8, when a group of Bolsonaro supporters attacked the Three Power (Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices) and the accusation against Bolsonaro of having illegally seized jewelry given by the Saudi Arabian government when he was president.
After being away for that period, on March 30 he returned to Brazil, and justified in a speech at the Liberal Party (PL) headquarters that his stay in the U.S. was “to have a better view of Brazil”. But what this time away from Brazil can say about his posture?
We talked with Denilde Holzhacker, a PhD in political science graduated from the University of São Paulo, and she explains that, by leaving the country, Bolsonaro “made a strategic move to protect himself at a time that he knew he was going to be in the first months of the Lula government” she completes that “as he has many cases in court, being away would be a mode to preserve him and preserve the political support he had post-elections.”
During the first 100 days of Lula’s government we could see how Bolsonaro’s position affected the current government, according to Holzhacker “Lula lost the chance to have a constant counterpoint with Bolsonaro” so that “despite having gained support and a strong social commotion, Lula’s strategy ended up having to be changed with Bolsonaro’s removal from Brazil”.
We never know about the future, but certainly these first months of the new government were not easy for either side. In the view of the political scientist “today the discussion is the ability of the Lula government to respond in terms of policy and organization of the State and on Bolsonaro’s side whether he will be able to rearticulate his support network and be able to face the Workers’ Party (PT) in municipal elections.”
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The article above was edited by Ana Beatriz Aith.
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