Three months after leaving Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro sat on Thursday with a glass of cava in his hand in the front row of the Boeing 737 of the Brazilian company Gol painted with Harry Potter motifs, with which he traveled from Orlando to Brasilia. As he tried to sleep, above his head, in the trunk, an image from the Universal theme park dedicated to the character of J.K. Rowling presided over the opening scene of a movie with an unpredictable ending.
The former Brazilian president will need a magic wand to overcome the obstacles that lie ahead in his goal of returning to the presidency of Brazil, after last year’s electoral defeat – by less than 2% – and his departure from power, which was also a Physical departure from the country, then interpreted as a flight to avoid facing the judicial investigations that weigh on him.
The ex-soldier left Brazil on December 30 – being president and on an Air Force plane – heading to Florida (USA), where he has remained these three months, and did not attend the inauguration on January 1 of his successor, the progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Nor was he in his country when, on January 8, hundreds of his followers staged the assault on the presidential palace of Planalto, the Parliament and the headquarters of the Judiciary, located in the Plaza de los Tres Poderes in Brasilia, which many of the Media and society consider an attempted “coup” promoted by Bolsonaro.
Only one passenger on the plane timidly booed the former president when the last one entered the device. The majority applauded and chanted his name. They then made a pilgrimage to his seat to take selfies, just as they had done at the Orlando airport.
Upon arriving in Brasilia, hundreds of supporters were waiting for him, but it was not the crowd that was expected. For security reasons, Bolsonaro left through a secondary door, dodged his followers and went directly to the headquarters of the Liberal Party (PL), where he met with legislators and leaders of the party – of which he is honorary president – and He made his first statements.
Without expressly acknowledging it, the former president returns to Brazil to exercise the opposition leadership against the Government, uniting all right-wing formations. Although Bolsonaro no longer has the anti-lulist support that led him to win the 2018 elections, the PL has a relevant legislative force in the fragmented Brazilian Parliament: 99 deputies out of 513 and 12 senators out of 81.
Bolsonaro did not mention Lula but made it clear that he is returning with his usual belligerent tone, saying that the government “for now and for a short time will be in power” but “that it will not do what it wants with the future of the nation.” . In addition, he criticized the Executive for not making an armored car available to him and ruled out that his wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, is a presidential candidate in 2026, as is beginning to be speculated. “She has no experience” and “she doesn’t want to,” said the former president of his wife. Other speculations suggest that the candidate could be his son Eduardo, a federal deputy.
But Bolsonaro has before him a panorama where he will have to dedicate more time to justice than to politics. He faces fifteen investigations, ten in ordinary justice and five in the Supreme Court, including the accusation of promoting a coup on January 8.
Bolsonaro’s first appointment is next Wednesday when he must go to the Federal Police to explain why he kept valuable gifts from the Saudi government –which he finally handed over to public assets– worth 160,000 euros, including jewelry and a white gold Rolex with diamonds. Some gifts were sent to Bolsonaro from Riyadh last November, when he was still president but he had already lost the election. In addition, in 2021, Customs seized jewelry valued at three million euros at the São Paulo airport from a member of the delegation returning from an official trip by the president to Saudi Arabia.
