So the man who left the country just before the great chaos is back. At 6:38 a.m. on Thursday morning, a plane from Orlando, USA, landed in Brasília – and the plane actually got off the very same Jair Bolsonaro, who had repeatedly announced and repeatedly postponed his return from exile in America.
In the pictures that were spread from the return, the 68-year-old ex-president is visibly relaxed; While still on the plane, he wipes around on his smartphone, high-fives with a few followers in an underground car park, and later waves to the supporters with a grin from a window. The police had braced themselves for the worst, but for the time being it remained largely calm at the airport and in the city.
Whether Bolsonaro’s laugh is real or just masks his true state of mind, he knows best himself; the latter is more likely. The ex-president has to face a series of legal and political investigations in Brazil, it’s about corruption, such as a jewel gift from the Saudi Arabian government worth three million dollars, which he wrongly brought into the country and put into his own pocket should have. He will have to make a statement on this case and other similar allegations in a few days. But first of all, it’s about what happened on January 8th.
Fled from the ceremony
That Sunday, a mob of Bolsonaro supporters broke into several government buildings in Brasília. They vandalized parts of the Supreme Court, the Parliament building and the Government Palace in a highly symbolic attack on democracy. More than 1500 people were arrested. It was no coincidence that the date fell just short of January 6th, the second anniversary of the storming of the US Capitol.
Bolsonaro does not want to have had anything directly to do with the riot. Whether this is true is the subject of investigations that have been underway for a long time. What is certain, however, is that his behavior fueled the violence. After his opponent, ex-President Lula da Silva, narrowly won the presidential runoff in the fall, Bolsonaro often whispered of electoral fraud, although there is still no evidence of this. The right-wing politician had also repeatedly glorified political violence.
The fact that Bolsonaro then flew to the USA at the end of December was also no coincidence: he was in a sense fleeing the appointment ceremony of his successor Lula in early January. According to tradition, he should have handed him the presidential sash – but in doing so Bolsonaro would have created an image that would have appeared as if he were legitimizing his successor.
What is Bolsonaro doing now? As is typical for him, he did not comment very clearly on this. In an interview before leaving the United States, he assured that he did not want to become the leader of the opposition. But he will work with his Liberal Party and get involved, traveling around the country and speaking to supporters. The head of the Liberal Party welcomed this eagerly. With 99 out of 513 mandates, the party is the strongest force in parliament. MP Eduardo Bolsonaro, on the other hand, said of his father: “Of course he takes on the role of leader of the opposition.”
It is not yet possible to say where all this will lead to, whether Bolsonaro will not want to compete openly with Lula again in the long term and replace him at the head of state. A lot depends on how the investigations against Bolsonaro go and how the judiciary ultimately judges him. It is possible that the courts will exclude him from taking part in elections for a few years. What is certain is that the return of their hero to Brazilian soil will give new impetus to the Bolsonarists, whose voice had been quiet for a while.