The Heir to Jair: Flavio Bolsonaro battles to reclaim father’s rule of Brazil in razor-tight election

The Heir to Jair: Flavio Bolsonaro battles to reclaim father’s rule of Brazil in razor-tight election Four years after Jair Bolsonaro was defeated in an election by left-wing Lula da Silva, his son, Flavio is looking to reclaim power for the hard-right family. Alex Croft reports - Bookmark - CommentsGo to comments Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Already a member? Log in From behind the bare walls of his cramped prison cell, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro uttered four words to his son that could change the country’s future. “Let’s go, it’s you,” he said, handing Senator Flavio Bolsonaro his most prized asset: his blessing to become candidate for Brazil’s 2026 election. As the election looms on Sunday, the race is too close to call between Flavio and the incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s left-wing president. The latest poll puts Flavio just one per cent ahead. A win for Flavio would see Brazil lurch back to the right after four years of left-wing government under Lula, a titan of South American politics who led the country between 2003 and 2011 before he was reelected in 2023. The latest poll of more than 2,000 people by Quaest suggests Flavio would receive 45 per cent of the vote, compared with 44 per cent for Lula. But experts have told The Independent that history shows the Bolsonaro vote is often under-accounted for in such polls - meaning the prospect of victory for Flavio appears likely. Who is Flavio Bolsonaro? Flavio was born and grew up in Rio de Janeiro to father Jair and his first wife, former city councillor Rogeria Nantes Braga Bolsonaro. He graduated with a bachelor of laws degree at the Candido Mendes University. The eldest son of Jair, who received a 27-year jail sentence after being found guilty of plotting a coup following his 2022 election loss to Lula, Flavio has been keenly involved in politics since he was young. In his early 20s, Flavio was elected to his first term as a state deputy in the 2002 Brazilian general election, before being reelected in 2006, 2010, and 2014. In 2016, Flavio and his bodyguard - a military police officer - reportedly exchanged gunfire with thieves holding up a car in Rio de Janeiro. But he now faces a scandal of his own. Flavio is currently being investigated over alleged money laundering and corruption linked to his financial ties with lawyer Willer Tomaz and his funding for the biographical film about his father, entitled Dark Horse. The probe into the senator was opened in July by Supreme Court Justice Andre Mendonca, a Bolsonaro appointee who has recently been hailed as a hero by many on Brazil's right - including Flavio himself. How does he differ from his father? The 45-year-old may look the spitting image of his imprisoned father but he has sought to make his differences clear. “I’m grounded — more inclined toward dialogue and to build bridges,” he told The Washington Post in April. “I’m the Bolsonaro you always wanted.” Dr Chris Sabatini, the director of the Latin America programme at Chatham House, said he is a “much more moderate” version of his father, noting that he picked a moderate, pro-business running mate Alfredo Gaspar. “He’s less bombastic than his father. He’s less openly misogynistic and racist than his father. So he’s sort of his father without the rough edges, but oddly enough, still with that outsider candidate appeal that voters in Latin America are looking for right now,” Dr Sabatini added. Flavio, he added, has got a “lot of the popular benefits” of his father: an anti-establishment populist who held fierce conservative values and commanded the support of Brazil’s rural areas - but with publicly less of the “troubling aspects of Jair’s rhetoric and behaviour and personality”. From telling Brazilians to “stop whining” about Covid-19 after 260,000 had died, making series of viciously homophobic statements throughout his career, and grotesquely telling Congress member Maria do Rosário that he would “never rape” her because she didn’t “deserve it”, the former president offered unashamedly discriminatory rhetoric as he posed himself as an anti-establishment opton - despite having entered politics in the 1980s. The final nail in the coffin of Jair’s political career came after he was jailed for attempting to subvert the transition of the presidency to Lula in 2022, including plots to arrest senior judges and politicians, and shut down several government institutions. What would a Bolsonaro victory mean for Brazil and the world? A Bolsonaro victory would be a political, economic and cultural shock for Brazil, after four years of left-wing Lulism, Lula’s vision of a market-friendly social democracy paired with state-led social welfare and poverty reduction programmes, market-friendly social democracy with aggressive, state-led poverty reduction programs and social welfare initiatives. On the international stage, Flavio would align Brazil much more closely with US President Donald Trump, and may even pull back on Brazil’s presence in BRICS, the alliance of the emerging world powers including Russia, India, China and South Africa. Lula, on the other hand, has clashed with Mr Trump. “[Flavio] arguably owes a large part of the Bolsonaro boost to President Trump, both publicly criticising the trial of his father and sanctioning the justice who was investigating and trying the case,” says Dr Sabatini. Flavio would likely do a “u-turn” on Brazil’s foreign policy profile of the last several decades, with its position as the leader of the global south set to be “completely reversed” if he won power. He would “emphasise a vision of Brazil as an autonomous actor seeking to reform the international order”, said Professor Tom Long of the University of Warwick. Domestically, electoral success for Flavio Bolsonaro would mean an erosion of civil rights for LGBT people, tightened fiscal budgets, and an aggressive anti-climate policy programme. “Flavio Bolsonaro is an aggressive climate change denier. Not just a climate change denier, an aggressive one,” says Dr Sabatini. Former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silver warned in an interview with The Guardian that Flavio would seek to complete his father’s “perverse project” of deforesting the Amazon rainforest, which suffered significant environmental harm during Jair Bolsonaro’s term. “There will likely be more displacement and more deforestation, and probably even the risk of greater violation of indigenous land rights in these cases,” Dr Sabatini said. He added that there will be “fiscal cuts and tightening the belt across the board, cuts in social programmes”. The results of the Brazilian election are expected to come in in the early hours of Monday UK time, for what is a hugely consequential election for the future of not just Brazil, but all of South America. Join our commenting forum Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies Comments