(Reuters) – Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) reiterated this Thursday his pre-candidacy for President in the October election, saying that there is no going back on this decision.
“There will be no other possibility of candidacy. My pre-candidacy is something that has no turning back, there is no turning page”, said the eldest son of former president Jair Bolsonaro to journalists in front of the Federal Police Superintendence in Brasília, where he went to visit his father, who is in prison.
“There is nothing that will make this change and I will continue to do my part to seek this unity with everyone”, he added.
Flávio denied a split in the Bolsonaro camp, in particular with the former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro and the governor of São Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas (Republicans), and said he was working to unite the group around his name. At the same time, he said he respected “each person’s time”.
The announcement that Bolsonaro chose Flávio, his eldest son, to be the Bolsonaro candidate for the Palácio do Planalto caused turmoil in the financial market, which preferred Tarcísio’s candidacy because it understood that the former president’s firstborn son has less capacity to attract centrist voters, thus facilitating the re-election of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose economic policy is the target of criticism from market agents.
showed Flávio well ahead of Tarcísio in the first round scenario in which both appear as candidates. However, his performance is similar to that of the governor against Lula in the first round scenarios in which only one of them appears as a candidate and in the second round simulations against the PT member.
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The survey showed that the PT member has an advantage of 9 percentage points over Flávio and 12 points over Tarcísio in the first round simulations in which only one of the two oppositionists is a candidate. In the second round scenarios, Lula is 5 percentage points ahead of Tarcísio and appears with 7 percentage points more than Flávio.
Bolsonaro, defeated by Lula in 2022, is imprisoned at the headquarters of the Federal Police Superintendence in Brasília serving a sentence of more than 27 years in prison for an attempted coup d’état imposed by the First Panel of the Federal Supreme Court (STF). He was also declared ineligible until 2030 by two decisions by the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).
