BRASILIA | Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was admitted to a military hospital in Brasilia on Monday evening for tests after he fell unwell as a result of the stabbing he suffered in 2018 during his election campaign, according to one of his son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro.
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“The consequences of the attempted homicide (…) continue to cause health problems for my father”, tweeted Flavio Bolsonaro. “But evil has never won and will never win over good,” he added, asking for prayers for his father.
The 67-year-old president was absent Monday evening from a ceremony organized by the Republican Party, one of the parties that supports him, for which his presence had been announced.
“I’m sure the president is fine, we’re just having him undergo some tests, that’s why he’s not here,” said party chairman MP Marcos Pereira.
According to the G1 news site, first lady Michelle Bolsonaro was present at the ceremony and said her husband “is fine”. The Minister of Communication Fabio Faria for his part evoked a “malaise”.
According to G1, Mr. Bolsonaro was to spend the night in the hospital.
The Brazilian presidency did not respond to requests from AFP.
Abdominal alerts
Since the stabbing attack he suffered in September 2018, in the midst of the presidential election campaign, Jair Bolsonaro has suffered a succession of abdominal alerts.
Stabbed in the gut by an apparently unbalanced individual during a walkabout, he narrowly escaped death. The aftermath of this attack, which led to him having four abdominal operations, marred his tenure.
Mr. Bolsonaro was hospitalized for four days in July 2021 and then two days last January for intestinal obstructions from which he recovered without the need for surgery.
The surgeon Antonio Luiz Macedo, who has operated on him several times since the attack, recalled in January in an interview with the newspaper O Globo that “the risk of further obstruction” was “considerable” if he did not follow his recommendations.
During his tenure, which began in 2019, the far-right president also underwent surgery for a kidney stone, and contracted Covid-19 with mild symptoms in July 2020.
In addition to his health problems, Jair Bolsonaro is approaching his last six months in office in a delicate position, with a low popularity rating and polls giving him largely beaten in the October ballot by the left-wing ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
The economic context in Brazil is also worrying, with galloping inflation and hardly optimistic growth forecasts for 2022.