From time to time, the governor of São Paulo returns to the political scene as an unknown quantity.
On the 7th of September, he attacked, in a speech on Avenida Paulista, the (Supreme Federal Court) and called the minister a tyrant. He also stated that, ineligible and convicted of the coup plot, he would be the candidate in 2026. Upon leaving the stage, he greeted supporters as if he were campaigning.
Weeks before, there was , including trips and meetings with groups seeking to project it to the Planalto. In recent days, he sought to emphasize his preference for re-election in São Paulo and .
This ambiguity, according to experts, should last until next year’s elections, amid the governor’s attempt to attract both moderate and Bolsonarian supporters.
“Tarcísio will have to continue ‘kassabeando’, with his feet in two canoes”, says Marco Antonio Carvalho Teixeira, political scientist at FGV. The reference is to the president of the PSD, who is in the Bolsonarist government in São Paulo at the same time that his party has three ministries in the Lula government.
For the professor, Tarcísio tries to please different parts of society, starting with the Bolsonaro family and the followers who worship the figure of the former president. Not surprisingly, says Teixeira, the governor must wait until the last minute to announce a probable candidacy, in order to show loyalty to the political godfather who holds a significant portion of the electorate, even after the STF conviction for an attempted coup d’état.
Strictly speaking, ambiguity is not something new in Tarcísio’s career.
In 2014, he joined the former president’s government as director of the Department of Transport Infrastructure. Five years later, on another ideological front, he became Bolsonaro’s Minister of Infrastructure. I was by his side on the live stream in which Bolsonaro laughed when commenting on a supposed increase in suicides during the Covid pandemic.
Tarcísio was elevated to the position thanks to the support of the former president and, in parallel, his track record in technical roles pleased sectors of the business community.
“It’s a situation of ambiguity. Tarcísio doesn’t want to lose the votes of the Bolsonarists and knows that, if he wants to compete with a chance, he’ll need those votes. But he also understands that a radical turn will cause the loss of the centrist electorate”, says USP political scientist José Álvaro Moisés. The need to dialogue with moderates, he says, does not mean a regression of Bolsonarism without Bolsonaro, that is, after the conviction in the Supreme Court.
“I don’t believe that the conviction will necessarily ward off radicalism. This idea that Bolsonarism is being persecuted could intensify the movement”, says Moisés. Tarcísio’s ambivalent stance should intensify until the election race, he assesses. This is a response to the fragmented way in which the right presents itself now, without Bolsonaro’s leadership.
Anthropologist Isabela Kalil, coordinator of the Observatório da Extrema Direita, highlights that Bolsonarism has always been a movement that brought together heterogeneous groups. They were farmers, religious people, weapons dealers, among others, under the same leadership.
Whoever is the right-wing candidate, says Kalil, needs, first of all, to mobilize these segments once again, without ceasing to dialogue with the center. In any case, in his view, the future of the right will initially emerge from radicalized bases, given Bolsonaro’s legacy.
“When Aécio Neves questions the polls in 2014, this leaves the right susceptible to an extremist project”, says the anthropologist, adding that the radical right has always existed in the country because, according to her, Brazilians tend to be more conservative.
At times, conservative ideology had greater representation in electoral terms. This was the case of, in the 1930s, the largest fascist-inspired movement outside Europe. His motto “God, Country, Family” was adopted by Bolsonaro, who arrived at Planalto evoking, at the same time, a religious and militaristic discourse.
In any case, Tarcísio, as a candidate, would need to rely on some political strength in Congress. And he seems to have already found it: he could have 109 deputies and 15 senators, the largest benches in the Legislative Houses, with a fund of R$1 billion. “Right-wing leaders will compete to see who holds the most shares of Bolsonarism, which brought together very different people,” says Kalil.
Ultimately, Tarcísio will still invest in ambiguity as a way of reflecting the fragmentation of the electorate, experts assess. It is an attitude that, in the history of political philosophy, is reminiscent of the allegory that Niccolò Machiavelli develops in chapter 18 of “The Prince”, which treats the leader as half lion, to ward off enemies, and half fox, to avoid traps.
