Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s influence could prevail despite being under house arrest and in poor health, convicted and sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison on charges of attempting a coup.
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was not present in the room when a Supreme Court panel convicted and sentenced him to 27 years and three months in prison on charges of attempting a coup.
With Bolsonaro under house arrest and in poor health, his lawyer has said that the ex-leader was too sick to attend the final hearings. But despite frailty and his conviction, Bolsonaro’s political influence will certainly endure.
Even after his sentencing, public opinion is divided on whether he committed a crime and should go to prison, a debate that exists even though experts agree the far-right politician will continue to have a significant influence on the political landscape of the Latin American giant.
“Maybe we’ll see something relatively new in Brazilian politics: a public figure who is under house arrest, who cannot formally take part in politics because of a conviction and ineligibility, but who still influences the course of politics,” said anthropologist Isabela Kalil, coordinator of the Extreme Right Observatory, a research group based in Minas Gerais state.A divided society
Four days before his conviction, tens of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters took to the streets across Brazil on Independence Day. Among them was Luiz Niemeyer, a 62-year-old businessman in Rio de Janeiro, who sees the former president as a “hero” who has built an unstoppable political movement.
“Ideals are not killed, ideals are not arrested,” he said. “You can arrest Bolsonaro, you can kill Bolsonaro, but these ideals will not die.”
Opinion polls have shown that Bolsonaro remains central to Brazil’s polarized landscape. Even behind bars, he could determine who carries his coalition’s flag into the 2026 election. Observers say that to become a competitive contender against President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who is expected to run for reelection, any opposition candidate must first secure the crucial electoral base and explicit support of far-right leader Bolsonaro.
Recent polls show Lula regaining his popularity, suggesting he will be a competitive candidate in the next election.
But a poll released Aug. 28 by AtlasIntel shows Lula in a statistical tie with Bolsonaro in a hypothetical election scenario, if elections were to be held then and with the same 2022 candidates on the ballot.
