With his appointment as his, Jair tries to heal the cracks in his family circle. More than that, he tries to preserve the authoritarian and populist identity of his movement, resisting attempts to .
Since the beginning of his political career, Bolsonaro has run his political machine like a family business. It’s easy to understand why: his children never had any political capital independent of their father; If they don’t obey him, Jair will condemn them to political ostracism and, worse, the need to find a job.
By contrast, it has some political capital of its own.
We don’t know if it is big enough to support it in solo flight. There is no sign that Michelle has consistent positions on any relevant Brazilian issue. But she is articulate, unlike Carlos. She is charismatic, unlike Flávio. It is not directly associated with an attempt to destroy the Brazilian economy with the help of a foreign superpower, such as Eduardo. And it’s not so bad that he only managed to get elected in Balneário Camboriú, like Jair Renan.
This is exactly what disqualifies Michelle from leading the Bolsonarist camp. Only the total absence of political qualities makes a Bolsonaro relative loyal enough in his eyes.
Flávio Bolsonaro. But it’s not just about that.
By announcing Flávio’s candidacy, Bolsonaro indicates that he accepts losing the election, but does not accept dissolving his movement on the traditional right. His political capital will only be managed by those who blindly obey him.
And his orders are clear: the priority is to elect enough senators to impeach STF ministers, amnesty the coup plotters and resurrect the authoritarian offensive under the leadership not of Flávio, but of Flávio himself, already amnestied and miraculously free of the health problems that underlie his request for house arrest.
If this objective is achieved, it does not matter whether the next president will be Lula or Tarcísio.
The announcement of Flávio’s candidacy calls into question the strategy that the traditional right has adopted since the 2022 defeat. In the absence of an electorally viable third way, the handsome men thought, the alternative would be to moderate Bolsonarism from within and use it for their own ends.
The center actually did well: it developed a symbiosis with the coup, using the anti-STF rhetoric of the Bolsonarists to protect itself from corruption investigations originating in the STF.
Faria Lima created around Tarcísio de Freitas a liberal and technocratic character who, thanks to an alchemy never explained, would be able to assume the leadership of an eminently populist and personalist movement.
The traditional right made a mistake post-coup. He should have joined the efforts to break the coup – including its political arm, which the authorities were wrong to not investigate. It should have reorganized without the coup plotters, even if it took longer than one electoral cycle.
Now he runs the risk of losing the election in the same way, and starting reconstruction four years late. Faria Lima didn’t understand what the right needed. It was whoever understood.
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