The departing president’s decision to go abroad divided followers and makes the construction of a cohesive opposition movement all the more difficult
Oliver Stuenkel
Jan 2, 2023
In the first weeks after his electoral defeat, Jair Bolsonaro’s silence seemed to be a carefully crafted compromise between not wanting to disappoint his more radical followers — who demanded a military coup — and avoiding punishment from Brazil’s electoral court, which had signaled that Mr. Bolsonaro could lose his political rights if he explicitly questioned the result of the presidential elections on October 30, 2022.
Yet now that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is president, Mr. Bolsonaro’s post-election strategy increasingly strikes observers as confusing and counterproductive.
In pro-Bolsonaro groups, the president’s aloof stance has generated anger and disappointment. The outgoing president’s lukewarm December 30 farewell speech (broadcast on social media) did not go down well among many of his fans.
Pro-Bolsonaro profiles which usually preach to the converted had to go out of their way to depict the president’s cryptic…
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