Jair Bolsonaro has kept a low profile since his electoral defeat, but legal troubles have put the far-right leader back in the spotlight in a Brazil that remains marked by his four years in power, between provocations and serial scandals.
This 68-year-old ex-army captain is on trial Thursday in Brasilia for his attacks on electronic voting launched before the presidential election at the end of 2022. He risks ineligibility for eight years.
He also faces a myriad of other legal proceedings, some of which could land him in jail.
Narrowly beaten by veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, he has been discreet since his return at the end of March from a three-month stay in the United States in the air of voluntary exile, which began two days before the takeover. function of his rival.
But he remains active behind the scenes in his Liberal Party, which has the majority in Parliament.
The four years of mandate (2019-2022) of this nostalgic of the military dictatorship (1964-1985) were marked by a succession of crises.
He has stepped up attacks on institutions, virulently attacking the Supreme Court, and has continued to criticize the credibility of the electoral system.
An admirer of former US President Donald Trump, he has also been regularly accused of disseminating false information, in particular on Covid-19 or on electronic ballot boxes.
His provocative and macho style still appeals to his core of die-hard supporters, who remain numerous, despite the frequent slippages of the “Myth” (his nickname) who ended his term with the worst rejection rate (50%) of a running president. re-election in Brazil.
The lack of empathy denounced by many commentators at Jair Bolsonaro during the dramatic Covid crisis, which exceeded 700,000 dead in the country, had shocked the population.
This “corona-skeptic” refused to be vaccinated and joked about vaccines, which could turn people into a “crocodile” or a “bearded woman”.
Elected to “restore order”, Jair Bolsonaro often governed with blows of the chin, at the head of a cabinet shaken by dismissals and resignations. But at the very end of his mandate, his economic results were rather positive.
This devout Catholic had launched that “only God” could drive him out of power. But it was his pet peeve Lula who did it, with less than two million votes in advance.
He never congratulated him on his victory. He even left Brazil two days before the end of his mandate, mute and apparently depressed.
Displaying himself as a fervent patriot, he criticized, even insulted, several foreign heads of state or government, including French President Emmanuel Macron, isolating Brazil on the international scene.
In 2018, Jair Bolsonaro had been well elected (55%), despite his racist, misogynistic, homophobic or anti-indigenous slippages. His desire to put an end to corruption, violence, the economic crisis and the “rotten” left seduced.
A poor speaker, this ultra-conservative populist with approximate syntax and blue eyes had hit the mark with simple sentences.
Above all, he had secured the support of powerful agribusiness and evangelical lobbies, confession of his wife Michelle, 27 years younger than him.
This family advocate had five children by three different women.
Jair Bolsonaro is very close to his three eldest sons, all elected officials, who also collect controversy.
Born in March 1955 in Campinas, near Sao Paulo, into a family of Italian origin, Jair Bolsonaro had a military career studded with episodes of insubordination, before being elected deputy for the first time in 1991.
Having been close to death in 2018 after a knife attack in the middle of the election campaign, he continues to suffer from intestinal problems which have led him to emergency several times in the hospital.
06/22/2023 05:40:45 – Brasilia (AFP) – © 2023 AFP