Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro will join the Liberal Party (PL) to aim for his re-election in 2022, this right-wing party, which is part of its parliamentary base, announced on Wednesday. The Head of State “will sign his membership on November 22,” the PL said in a statement.
It is the ninth party in the far-right leader’s eventful political career, which began some thirty years ago.
Elected officials often change parties in Brazil, where the political spectrum is made up of a myriad of small parties, with a notion of right or left that is often rather vague.
Jair Bolsonaro had not been a member of any party for two years and his break with the Social Liberal Party (PSL, right), with whom he won the presidential election in 2018.
The PL is one of the parties of the “Centrao”, an informal group of formations which monetized their support in exchange for important posts for their members or subsidies for the electoral fiefdoms of their elected officials.
At the time of his election, Jair Bolsonaro, with his anti-system rhetoric, castigated all these arrangements of what he called “old politics”. But he ended up giving in to the same practices, a turnaround due in particular to the threat of impeachment which forced him to consolidate his parliamentary base.
Joining the PL is a new gesture towards the “Centrao”, which brings together more than 200 deputies, around 40% from the lower house. In August, he sealed his pact with the “Centrao” by appointing one of its leaders, Ciro Nogueira, to a key post in his government, the Casa Civil, half chief of staff, half prime minister.
The PL, which has 43 deputies (out of 513) and 4 senators (out of 81), “is the most visible face of the“ Centrao ”. The most important thing for this party is to be close to power, ”André César, of the Hold consultancy firm, told AFP.
Mr Bolsonaro’s popularity rating has dropped to 22%, the lowest since he began his term in January 2019, and he is given a widely defeated by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010) in the polls for the election of 2022, if the former left-wing president declared his candidacy.
Targeted by several investigations, he is widely criticized for his denial of the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 600,000 in Brazil. A Senate commission of inquiry called for his indictment for nine crimes, including “crimes against humanity”, for having “deliberately exposed Brazilians to mass contamination”.
On Wednesday, a few hours before the PL’s announcement, one of President Bolsonaro’s potential opponents in 2022, his former Minister of Justice, Sergio Moro, also announced that he was joining a party, the Podemos (center).