Brazil’s ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro, is fond of comparing himself to Donald Trump.
Both were elected on a platform of populist nationalism, and their terms overlapped. Trump was shot on the campaign trail, while Bolsonaro was stabbed.
Whereas Trump had the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the Capitol, Bolsonaro’s supporters rampaged through Brasília on Jan. 8, 2023, days after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s inauguration.
Now Brazil’s top prosecutor has filed charges against the former army officer, alleging that he attempted a coup following his election loss. Bolsonaro was the leader of a “criminal organization” based on an “authoritarian power project,” the Prosecutor General wrote in the complaint.
Already legally barred from seeking public office, Bolsonaro now faces the prospect of a criminal trial and possible jail time.
That’s another similarity with Trump, at least before he won a second term.
How this plays out will be closely watched across Latin America, in neighboring Argentina under fellow Trump supporter Javier Milei, but also in Chile, where right-wing populists are challenging for power.
Brazil remains deeply polarized after the Bolsonaro years and Lula’s subsequent victory. The leftist three-term president’s approval ratings have since plumbed record lows with elections due in October next year.
Bolsonaro, who has denied all wrongdoing, said yesterday he’s relaxed about the allegations. He accuses authorities of political persecution.
In a January interview, Bolsonaro said he was looking to Trump and Milei to help overcome his legal troubles. Holding elections without his name on the ballot would be “to deny democracy,” he said.
Where a trial of the main opposition figure would once have been a political death knell, today it risks becoming a platform for Bolsonaro’s grievances.
Rather than dismaying his many supporters, it might easily rally them.
After all, if Trump could do it, why not the Trump of the Tropics? — Alan Crawford