An outspoken ultra-right candidate once seen as a political outsider has plans to take the Brazilian presidency in 2018, emboldened by the success of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.
Ex-army captain Jair Bolsonaro, a 61-year-old congressman, tweeted congratulations to Trump after his election victory. “In 2018, Brazil will go the same way,” he wrote in November.
Parabéns ao povo dos EUA pela eleição d @realDonaldTrump .Vence aquele q lutou contra “tudo e todos”. Em 2018 será o Brasil no mesmo caminho
— Jair Bolsonaro (@jairbolsonaro) November 9, 2016
The two politicians have quite a bit in common. Like Trump, Bolsonaro is a prolific user of social media who rejects political correctness outright and has a knack for controversial statements that have made him as much loved as he is hated. And like Trump, he’s also seeking the political top spot at a time when his fellow citizens are frustrated with the status quo.
Born in Campinas in the state of Sao Paulo, Bolsonaro first came to public attention as an army captain who was charged but never convicted of encouraging domestic terrorism to promote higher military salaries. He entered politics as a city councilor in 1988 in Rio de Janeiro. Despite leaving the military 27 years ago, Bolsonaro’s 6-foot-high frame, athletic build and forceful vocal style are still more suggestive of an army captain than a career politician.
Bolsonaro, who has more than 3 million Facebook fans, is greeted with the nickname “Mito” in public, meaning myth or legend in English, and often bombarded with selfie requests. As congressman, he serves the people of Rio de Janeiro, where he received the most votes of all elected congressman from the area in 2014. Three of his sons are all also far right politicians.
Mistrustful of the mainstream media, Bolsonaro posts videos on social networks almost daily, giving his views on subjects like gun control and topical events such as prison riots. After the death of Fidel Castro, he released a video saying there was no need to cremate the former Cuban leader, as he “is now burning in the depths of hell.”
Bolsonaro is a member of the right-leaning Social Christian Party, though he’s switched political parties six times. Almost since first entering Congress in 1990, he’s had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way.
As he cast his vote for the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff in Congress last June, Bolsonaro dedicated it to Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who allegedly oversaw torture of political prisoners during Brazil’s dictatorship. Critics found the move jaw-dropping as Rousseff was a guerrilla who was herself tortured during those years.
During a TV debate about appropriate punishment for sex offenders in 2003, he told congresswoman Maria do Rosario, “I would never rape you, because you don’t deserve it.” He repeated his words in Congress in 2014, after which Rosario made a criminal complaint. Critics have accused Bolsonaro of homophobia and racism for his opposition to same-sex partnerships and quotas in universities.
Despite this, in a December survey by pollsters Datafolha, Bolsonaro was the fourth-most popular candidate, with 9 percent of Brazilians saying they would vote for him in October 2018’s general election. Leading the poll was former president Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva, with 25 percent.
The party lists of presidential candidates have not been finalized, and the alleged involvement of many senior politicians in large-scale corruption means the line-up could change substantially before the election. Current president Michel Temer has already said he does not intend to run in 2018.
But at least some experts say Bolsonaro may be well-positioned to capitalize on the wave of public discontent that swept over the country following Rousseff’s impeachment last August. The country is in a recession, with unemployment hovering around 12 percent. Street protests against corruption of all parties have become commonplace.
Lula and Temer both face corruption allegations, but Bolsonaro, who has never held a major political post outside of Congress, does not. He’s betting disillusion with a corrupt political establishment, frustration with high national crime rates and what many see as excessive political correctness will help him to secure the popular vote.
“One shouldn’t underestimate his electoral power, even if you don’t believe that he can repeat Trump’s success,” says University of Sao Paulo sociologist Gabriel Feltran.
Bolsonaro’s supporters are mainly Christian, middle-class white people, Feltran says. “It’s taxi drivers, merchants, police, security guards, small business owners, the self-employed, technicians with a low level of qualification, and even the new generation of factory workers.”
Sao Paulo civil policeman Ricardo Santi is one of them. He says the media, academia and cultural figures are out of step with the general public in a way that Bolsonaro is not.
“This opinion-forming class dictates what is politically correct to think and say, so that some opinions become ‘forbidden’,” Feltran says. “The problem is that these ‘politically incorrect’ opinions, most of the time, coincide with the opinion of the silent majority of the population. Bolsonaro gives them a voice.”
Polls suggest Bolsonaro’s popularity isn’t just limited to the middle class, however. A July 2016 survey, for example, found 19 percent of those earning between five and 10 times the national minimum salary would support him for the presidency.
While that poll suggested Bolsonaro’s support was greatest in the more affluent South and Southeast, more recent polls suggest he’s gaining popularity in the populous but poorer North.
Yet some are skeptical that he can really take the presidency.
Bolsonaro “would likely win by a small margin in the first round, then go out on the second,” says University of Brasilia political scientist David Fleischer. “He is a far-right candidate representing a certain segment of the electorate who favor a return to a military government.”
Unlike businessman Trump, Bolsonaro is quieter on the economy, preferring to focus on tough-on-crime policies such as chemical castration for rapists. His long stint in Congress arguably makes him part of the political establishment himself. That could count against him if other populist candidates from a non-political background surface before 2018, Fleischer says.
Another challenge for Bolsonaro is the relatively small size of his Social Christian Party, which holds only 12 seats in Congress.
One option for him is to switch parties. According to an article in Extra, a Rio de Janeiro newspaper, He has also considered forging greater alliances with other powerful evangelical politicians to gain support from other parties and harness the influential evangelical vote.
The idea of Bolsonaro, like Trump, defying expectations and winning the highest office in the land makes experts such as Feltran concerned.
“This ultra-conservatism seems to me to be a global phenomenon,” he says. But in Brazil, it connects militarism, moralism, anti-intellectualism and contempt for institutions in a “very worrying way.”
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Brazil’s Controversial Congressman Jair Bolsonaro Eyes the Presidency originally appeared on usnews.com
