To the praise Bolsa Família and defend the maintenance of the benefit for those entering the formal job market or opening their own business, senator and pre-candidate for the Presidency of the Republic Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) adopted a different discourse from that supported in the past.
Survey of AP Exact Intelligence based on publications by the parliamentarian onbran bag“.
When contacted, Flávio Bolsonaro denied that he had changed his position on Monday (15), during an event promoted by the magazine Lookin São Paulo, Flávio classified Bolsa Família as an “acquired right of the Brazilian people” and criticized prejudice against beneficiaries.
“Many people have a prejudice towards those who are on Bolsa Família, as if they don’t want to work. That’s a mistake. Almost 70% of people who receive Bolsa Família work informally. And why don’t they go to formality? Because they are afraid of losing the benefit”, he stated.
The senator promised that, if elected president, will ensure that beneficiaries maintain the aid for longer after becoming employedo with a formal contract or opening a company.
We have to understand that we even have an affective memory. Bolsa Família is stability for those who have already gone hungry. The person thinks the following: “if I get a formal job and lose Bolsa Família, and if I lose my job, how will I be?”, he said. “I will reaffirm that, once again, we guarantee them that the benefit will be maintained, that we will enhance this guarantee for them, to encourage people to have formal employment.
The lines contrast with demonstrations made by Flávio on social media before Bolsonarism arrived at Palácio do Planalto.
In a June 2013 publication, the senator stated that the PT “perpetuates poverty with the Bolsa-Farelo, keeping people dependent so as not to lose their votes“.
In the same year, making a reference to the commission responsible for investigating human rights violations during the military dictatorship, he wrote:
“#TruthCommission discovers that money falls from the sky and no one needs to work extra hard to support those who live on family grants.”
Flávio, who at last Monday’s event made a point of remember that your father’s government increased the value of Bolsa Famíliain the past he criticized the PT for reaching an agreement with the opposition to approve an increase in aid. “Public financing of the PT campaign”, he wrote, in a 2011 publication.
“The history of publications in X shows that Flávio started defending Bolsa Família from his father’s government in 2019. The first positive publication about the program was in October of that year, citing a provisional measure, signed by Bolsonaro, which granted the 13th to the program’s beneficiaries”, says Sergio Denicoli, CEO of Exact AP and data scientist.
For Denicoli, the strategy of defending the program makes sense from an electoral point of viewTherefore, to regain his advantage over Lula, Flávio needs to attract moderate voters and move away from more extreme positions, such as ending a program predominantly approved by Brazilians.
In a statement, Flávio stated that there is no change of position. “Bolsa Família is a right won by the Brazilian people and it was Bolsonaro’s government that tripled the amount paid to families. Unlike the PT, which uses the benefit in a clientelistic way, we defend a path to social mobility. Exactly for this reason, One of my proposals is to increase the length of stay in the program based on the achievement of employability and income. No one else will need to be afraid of losing the benefit for seeking financial autonomy.”
Senator has difficulties among program beneficiaries
BTG/Nexus research released this Tuesday (16), shows that Lula increases his advantage over Flávio in the second round when the cut-off is voters who receive Bolsa Família.
In the general electorate, Lula wins by 49% to 43%. Among the beneficiaries of the social program, the PT member reaches 67% and the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro drops to 27%. The survey interviewed 2,017 voters between June 12th and 14th. The margin of error is 2 percentage points and the confidence interval is 95%. The survey was registered with the Electoral Court under protocol BR-06645/2026.
“By defending Bolsa Família, Flávio brings together other voters. Despite having been critical in the past, his father’s own government changed the position of Bolsonarism in relation to the program. And, while they were in power, they did not end public policy and provided emergency aid during the pandemic, which gave a positive boom in popularity for Bolsonaro”, says Denicoli.
According to the CEO of Exact APFlávio’s statement about Bolsa Família comes in the wake of other recent speeches by the senator that seek to soften his image after the crisis involving Banco Master and the production of the film Dark Horse.
The consultancy data shows a timid recovery. Flávio managed to increase the volume of positive mentions on social networksbut remains the most criticized in the digital environment among all pre-candidates. The senator’s confidence index, which measures his credibility with the electorate, remains low: 12.44% in this Tuesday’s measurement, the 16th. In January, the index reached 19.4%.
Flávio voted against Rio de Janeiro’s ‘Bolsa Família’ in 2011
When he was a state deputy, Flávio was the only member of the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro (Alerj) to vote against the bill that created the Renda Melhor programproposed by then governor Sérgio Cabral in 2011.
The initiative was a kind of Bolsa Família Fluminense and provided for the direct transfer of resources to families in extreme poverty. THE proposal was approved by 54 votes to 1. “I was the only vote against in Alerj the ‘Renda Melhor’ project, which (sic) I called ‘bolsa-branelo’, due to its electoral clientelistic nature”, Flávio wrote on Twitter in November 2011.
Still on the social network, he reported that presented an amendment to stipulate that two years would be the maximum period for a person to receive the benefitwhich he once again called “bran bag”. The suggestion was not approved.
“I understand that it is up to the State to provide means to those people who are unable to achieve self-sufficiency in terms of education, in terms of health, in terms of social advancement. This is something legitimate. But, as written in the project, this cannot have a permanent nature”, said Flávio in the session that approved the text.
