Jair Bolsonaro Could Finally Go to Jail
Brazil has charged ex-president Jair Bolsonaro with conspiring to murder President Lula da Silva and stage a military coup. It’s a serious blow to the far right, but unless the material conditions of the majority improve, Bolsonarismo will remain a threat.
Jair Bolsonaro speaking to members of the media after departing the Federal Police headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil, on October 18, 2023. (Ton Molina / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Two years and ten days after a mob of his partisans invaded and trashed Brazil’s houses of government, the law has come for Jair Messias Bolsonaro. The former far-right president of Brazil stands accused, in concert with thirty-three of his closest allies, of leading a criminal conspiracy to carry out the “violent abolition” of Brazil’s democratic order, as well as planning the assassination of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Justice Alexandre de Moraes. If convicted, the sixty-nine-year-old could face more than forty years in jail.
The charges levied by Paulo Gonet, Brazil’s attorney general, followed a yearlong investigation into the attempted insurrection of January 8, 2023. A damning report released by Gonet late last year accuses Bolsonaro not only of orchestrating a coup to retain the presidency following his election loss to Lula in October 2022 but conspiring with members of the military to assassinate his political opponents outright. Bolsonaro has vehemently denied the allegations, expressing his “astonishment and indignation” at what he describes as a baseless witch hunt.
Earlier this week Gonet summarized the stakes in grave terms: “What was being called for — let it be said — was nothing other than a military coup.” The state claims to have amassed a wealth of evidence demonstrating that 8/1, as the failed insurrection is known in Brazil, was a premeditated attempt to overturn a democratic election and retain power through force.
It is very likely that the case will proceed to trial. When and where that will occur is already disputed, with Supreme Court justice Moraes already expressing his eagerness to reach a judgment before next year’s presidential elections. Bolsonaro was banned for running in elections before 2030 due to “lies and attacks on the electoral system” during the 2022 elections, but he hopes to enter the race regardless. Though it may be mere bluster, Bolsonaro is widely popular and could very well sabotage the electoral process if left at large.
Moraes, a dedicated opponent of Bolsonaro despite being appointed to the Supreme Court by the ultraright former president Michel Temer, has stirred controversy by pushing to try the case before a smaller Supreme Court tribunal that is widely expected to convict the former president unanimously. Clearly, the court wants to avoid a protracted and politicized legal battle before the full bench of the Supreme Court, to which Bolsonaro has appointed several loyalists.
With elections looming in 2026 — and Bolsonaro still gunning for candidacy — a return of the far right to the Palácio de Planalto could derail accountability over the planned coup. It would not be the first coup in Brazil to go unpunished.
An End to the Brazilian Military’s Impunity?
Nonetheless, the charges are a notable victory for Lula, whose third presidential tenure has been mired in congressional gridlock and rising inflation. It was by no means certain that Bolsonaro would be held to account for 8/1. Bolsonaro fled to Miami on an expired visa when Lula took office, and rumors of him potentially taking asylum in the embassy of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary have circulated. The Supreme Court’s attack on Bolsonaro and his fellow coup plotters is a welcome reminder that the far right is not unassailable.
More notable than the charging of Bolsonaro himself is the indictment of a substantial roster of military officials, including high-ranking officers. At least three generals and the former head of the navy may now face trial for conspiring to overthrow Brazilian democracy. For a country not yet forty years removed from a savage military dictatorship, the moment is deeply symbolic. Brazil’s army has never been held to account for its innumerable abuses: it remains a festering wound of violence and authoritarianism at the heart of the Brazilian body politic.
The continued threat to democracy posed by the military has been laid bare in this week’s charges. Members of the special forces were directly involved in the attempted insurrection, with balaclava-wearing operatives scaling government buildings to smash entrances for rioters and dispersing tear gas with firehoses. They aimed to do far greater damage. State prosecutors allege that members of the special forces were prepared to resort to terrorism, planning a brazen campaign of assassinations to benefit their former army colleague Bolsonaro.
Dubbed “Green and Yellow Dagger,” the plan called for killing Lula and his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, alongside Moraes. Poison, explosives, and kidnapping were all on the table; the plotters went as far as tracking their enemies’ movements through Brasília following Lula’s election victory. The plan was conceived, according to prosecutors, by brigadier general Mario Fernandes and a small gang of lieutenant colonels, majors, and federal police. Astonishingly, the Supreme Court alleges that Bolsonaro not only knew of the plan beforehand but urged that the assassinations proceed.
Bolsonarismo and Lulismo in Flux
This case will, in all likelihood, proceed to trial. If it does, legal experts suggest that the state possesses the evidence it needs to put Bolsonaro and his coconspirators behind bars. But Bolsonarismo itself is larger than the man, and the former president’s brand remains a serious political force in Brazil. Eradicating it may prove a bridge too far for the seventy-nine-year-old Lula.
Despite holding the presidency, Lula has little sway on Congress. With his coalition controlling a mere 80 of the lower house’s 513 seats, Lula has from the start been obliged to grant extensive concessions to the Right — not least of which is an “iron-clad commitment to austerity” that has savaged already meager social spending. The result has been a “cautious and constrained” administration, unable to meaningfully pursue its redistributive agenda in the face of stubborn resistance.
Lula’s popularity among his own base has accordingly suffered. Having seen partial gains in employment and expanded cash transfer programs, poor Brazilians are once again being crushed under the rising costs of food and gas. Despite making reducing food prices a core priority of his government this year, Lula’s failure to combat inflation has sent his approval rating plummeting to its lowest levels in his three terms as president. This divorce between rhetoric and reality has alienated some of Lula’s staunchest allies. “Propaganda, rhetoric, events and announcements at the Palácio no longer suffice,” said a leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement. “We want concrete measures to solve real problems.”
On the other hand, the Right has suffered from its own paralysis in the wake of Bolsonaro’s ousting and prosecution. Prominent conservatives differ widely on the degree to which Bolsonaro’s disruptive political style should be carried forward. In light of his conviction, the conservative swamp may well consider the Bolsonaro name tainted enough to jettison entirely. With one of Bolsonaro’s sons poised to make a run on the presidency in 2026, the trajectory of the far right in Brazil may be contested between the staid but formidable establishment and more extreme populist currents.
Bolsonaro’s own party is also in flux. The Liberal Party (PL) remains a significant force nationally, but its efforts to consolidate power at the state and municipal levels could dampen the frenzied populist energy that Bolsonaro successfully galvanized in 2018. Whether the party can maintain its populist appeal to disaffected sectors of the working class while integrating itself into the amorphous right-wing establishment remains to be seen. The surprising success of influencer and grifter Pablo Marçal, who came within a hair’s breadth of the second round of São Paulo’s 2024 mayoral election, suggests that far-right populism has juice beyond its Bolsonarist expression.
For the moment, Lula has won a genuine victory. Yet his prospects are grim. “It is hard to see how Lulismo will hold together its electoral constituency,” concludes political scientist André Singer, “without a general rise in living and working conditions, which will in turn require a bolder political approach.” That approach would involve contesting the entrenched power of agribusiness, finance, and the military — oligarchic blocs that have repeatedly resorted to naked force to preserve their domination.
Brazil has resolutely demonstrated that coup-mongers can be challenged. The United States — which conspired in Brazil’s 1964 military coup and provided the model for its most recent insurrection — would do well to heed this object lesson in holding right-wing lawbreakers to account. Jair Bolsonaro, a vulgar and fascistic force, now faces jail. But so long as the dispossession of the masses continues unabated, democracy in Brazil will remain under permanent threat.