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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro once tried to wait for the final results of his 2022 re-election bid: “Prison, death or victory. “
It is not victory. The death came in the form of the end of his presidency, which he reluctantly accepted on Tuesday, two days after his opponent declared elections.
What about prison?
“You can rest assured that this option . . . It doesn’t exist,” the far-right leader told members of his very important evangelical base in August 2021.
Analysts, however, believe that a long career behind bars may also be a very genuine prospect for the bellicose Bolsonaro, even if it may take years.
Almost since the beginning of his questionable term in 2019, Bolsonaro has racked up charges and investigations for everything from spreading disinformation to crimes against humanity.
He has survived more than impeachment offers, a record.
Most of them involved his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, which claimed the lives of more than 685,000 people in Brazil, the current number in the world after the United States.
During his tenure, Bolsonaro had legal consequences through two political allies: Attorney General Augusto Aras and Arthur Lira, the speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress.
But that will be on January 1, 2023, when his archrival, former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, takes the reins and Bolsonaro loses his presidential immunity.
– ‘Crimes of humanity’ –
Legal can come from several fronts.
A Brazilian Senate committee has fees for Bolsonaro’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, adding “crimes against humanity. “
Bolsonaro, who denies covid and has proposed unproven cures and said vaccines can turn other people into “alligators,” is also under investigation for allegedly failing to act on an allegation of embezzlement related to coronavirus vaccine purchases.
Another investigation is underway into allegations that Bolsonaro leaked a classified police investigation into corruption charges to his sons and interfered in another.
The outgoing president also implicated in an investigation into his son, Senator Flavio, for an alleged scheme to collect part of the salaries of political officials in a practice known as “rachadinha. “
This case was dismissed because Bolsonaro junior enjoyed parliamentary immunity.
Bolsonaro has denied wrongdoing, saying he was the victim of political persecution.
“They are a way to succeed in me,” he said after online news site Uol published claims 30 days before the election that members of his family circle had bought 51 properties.
The houses were paid for in whole or in part in coins totaling about $4. 7 million between 1990 and 2022, and questions arose about the origin of the coins.
There were also allegations that his oversight had been abused with public money to curry favor with evangelical leaders.
“At the end of his presidential term, Jair Bolsonaro will be guilty before justice and the prosecutor’s job will be to open new investigations,” lawyer Rogerio Dultra dos Santos of the Federal University of Fluminense told AFP.
Bolsonaro was elected on an anti-corruption platform at a time when the country was reeling from a massive corruption scandal involving state oil company Petrobras, Lula’s government and his Workers’ Party (PT).
Lula’s own convictions related to this scandal were later overturned.
– ‘Several years’ –
Lula pledged to provide potentially compromising documents, both official and personal, that Bolsonaro had sealed for a hundred years before leaving office.
This “could have consequences,” dos Santos said.
However, any attempt to bring Bolsonaro to justice may “take several years” given the likelihood of appeals along the way, the analyst added.
Ironically, Bolsonaro may take advantage of a Supreme Court ruling that authorized Lula’s release from prison in November 2019 pending an appeal against his corruption conviction.
Temporarily changing course from his past insistence that Lula would never win the election, Bolsonaro said he would “stay away from politics” if he lost.
But Mayra Goulart, a political scientist at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, said she would be “very surprised” if that were true.
Legislators and other diverse officials in Brazil enjoy immunity from prosecution during their term.
Whatever his legal fate, Goulart said Bolsonaro will most likely follow a path similar to that of his political idol, Donald Trump, “who maintains abundant influence in American politics despite his defeat in 2020. “
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