Jair Bolsonaro still shapes Brazil’s right wing

ON OCTOBER 6TH voters across Brazil will go to the polls to select more than 5,500 mayors and tens of thousands of city councillors (second-round run-offs will follow at the end of the month). The gigantic municipal vote provides a barometer of sorts for the next presidential election, which is due in 2026. Signs in the run-up are unsettling. Two years after Brazilians booted out Jair Bolsonaro, their inept and dangerous former president, right-wing politics remains in his thrall. An acolyte—or perhaps an imitator—could return Mr Bolsonaro’s movement to power.

For a while optimists had dared to hope that the bolsonaristas were a spent force. After losing the presidential election in 2022 Mr Bolsonaro spent a few months in Florida, moping around fried-chicken shops and occasionally posing for selfies with fans. On January 8th 2023—one week after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the left-wing current president, was inaugurated—supporters who believed their idol’s claim that the election had been rigged ransacked Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidential palace. Brazilians were appalled. And even some of the extremists, unimpressed by Mr Bolsonaro’s wimpy self-exile, ended up feeling let down.

In June 2023 Mr Bolsonaro was barred from holding public office for eight years for having used state television to cast doubt on the reliability of voting machines in advance of the election that he lost. His problems have only piled up since then. In March Brazilian police formally accused him of forging a covid vaccine certificate. In July they formally accused him of embezzlement in connection with gifts of jewellery and watches from Saudi Arabia. (Mr Bolsonaro denies both these accusations.) Numerous other probes are ongoing, including one examining how far Mr Bolsonaro played a role in stoking the riots on January 8th. The chances of him going to jail are rising.

Yet even if he is a much diminished figure, for the moment Mr Bolsonaro remains a kingmaker for the political right. His Liberal Party is the largest in Congress. This year he has proved able to attract tens of thousands—and sometimes hundreds of thousands—of fans to events, such as rallies where he criticises the Supreme Court, which is overseeing several of the investigations into him (he is pictured above at one such gathering, in September). For weeks he has been touring Brazil to drum up support for the mayoral candidates he endorsed. In 23 of Brazil’s 100 or so largest cities, candidates who have gained backing from Mr Bolsonaro are polling in first place. (By comparison, there are 16 races in which candidates supported by Lula, as the current president is known, are likely to win.)

All this disappoints people who had wondered whether, with Mr Bolsonaro barred from office, a more centrist opposition could emerge. Brazil’s main centrist outfit, the Party of Brazilian Social Democracy, is weaker than ever. In 2016 seven of Brazil’s 26 state capitals had mayors from that party; after the elections this month the number may be none.

Many technocratic conservatives are tacking to the right. The race to be mayor of São Paulo, Brazil’s biggest city, is currently led by Ricardo Nunes, the uncharismatic incumbent. Backing from Mr Bolsanaro has helped him. But in part to get that Mr Nunes picked as his running-mate Mello Araújo, a bolsonarista and former colonel who publishes pictures of his own children carrying semi-automatic rifles, and who has also criticised the use of body cameras by police.

The risk for politicians who choose to hold the middle ground is that they will be shoved aside by upstarts from the radical right—even ones who have not received Mr Bolsonaro’s formal blessing. The most eye-catching story in São Paulo’s race has been the startling rise of Pablo Marçal, a 37-year-old self-help guru and digital influencer who at present seems likely to win around 20% of the city’s vote. His populist campaign apes much of what made the former president a sensation, and appeals to many of the same voters. During an election debate broadcast live on September 15th Mr Marçal goaded a rival into hitting him with a chair.

At a rally held by Mr Marçal on September 24th, cars bore flags carrying the words, “Out, Satan!” A jingle blasting from one pickup truck sang, “Marçal has arrived to bring down the system.” Regina Carvalho, a 63-year-old small-business owner, could not name any of Mr Marçal’s election promises (they include building a skyscraper 1km high). But she said she would vote for him anyway. “Him saying ‘out with the corrupt, out with the system, out with [leftist] activists’ is enough for me.”

The politicians who are most often tipped to lead the right into the election in 2026 seem to be sensing the mood. Tarcísio de Freitas, the governor of São Paulo state, Brazil’s richest and most populous, looks like one of the best positioned. But despite having served as Mr Bolsonaro’s infrastructure minister, he has long struggled to win bolsonaristas’ trust. He has worked in left-wing governments, is considered friendly with Lula and is seen as too nice to bankers.

Lately Mr Freitas has been trying to toughen up his image. He has permitted the military police to ramp up operations in his state’s poorer neighbourhoods. In February a policeman was killed in a favela; in the following 36 days police officers killed 45 people in the same district. Civil-society organisations were outraged. “I couldn’t care less,” said Mr Freitas. Bolsonaristas have “started seeing him as one of them”, says Camila Rocha of the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning, a research institute.

For the moment Lula remains relatively popular. He has hinted that he will run for president again in 2026. Yet by then he will be nearly 81 (around the same age that President Joe Biden is now). Should plans change, his Workers’ Party might perhaps struggle without him. Its base–of Roman Catholics, manufacturing workers and the urban bourgeoisie–is shrinking. At the same time, the stock of Brazilians who are likely to be attracted to right-wing politics is growing. Mr Bolsonaro’s biggest supporters were evangelical Christians, people in agribusiness who favour laxer environmental laws and voters worried about corruption and crime.

In 2002, the year that Lula won a first stint as president, evangelicals made up 15% of the population, and Catholics 74%. Today 31% of Brazilians are evangelicals and only half are Catholic. Agricultural exports were 37% of Brazil’s total exports in 2000, but today make up almost half; in the same period manufacturing has shrunk. Whatever guise Brazil’s right wing now assumes could affect the country for decades to come. ■