SAEDNEWS: Far-right senator Flávio Bolsonaro has reportedly left Brazil and is heading to the United States after losing Sunday’s presidential election to left-wing incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who condemned the move as “shameful.”
According to Saednews, A report by the news website Metrópoles, citing people close to the politician’s family, said he was on his way to the US. “The plane is in flight,” Metrópoles reported, without specifying where it had departed from, according to The Guardian.
Allies of Bolsonaro told Metrópoles that he would land in Florida on Tuesday afternoon and planned to seek political asylum. “The Donald Trump administration has been informed,” the website added.
Lula condemned Bolsonaro’s apparent decision to flee.
“This is what the Bolsonaro family is like. Brazil is their second homeland. Their first homeland is licking the boots of the US, as he has become accustomed to doing,” Lula said at an event celebrating his 81st birthday in Brasília.
“I keep imagining what is on the conscience of a citizen who has just lost an election and flees his country … Someone who owes nothing fears nothing. A citizen who sneaks out of his country owes something. Leaving Brazil in this way is shameful,” he added.
Allies also confirmed to the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo that Bolsonaro was heading to the US. They said the escape plan had been “organized and facilitated by a lawyer close to the Bolsonaro clan”.
“They say the flight should land in a few hours,” the newspaper added.
The news network CNN Brasil reported that Bolsonaro had fled to the US with his wife and two daughters in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
A US State Department spokesperson said Bolsonaro and his family would be granted visas “to allow them entry into the United States”.
Lawmakers from Lula’s Workers’ Party asked the Supreme Court to order Bolsonaro’s arrest and requested that his name be added to Interpol’s Red Notice list.
Bolsonaro had not been seen since Monday and missed a Tuesday-morning deadline to surrender his passport to the federal police, fuelling rumours that he might have fled Brazil following his defeat on Sunday.
A report in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo said that during a meeting with friends and lawyers on Monday, the defeated candidate had appeared “possessed and made it clear he was afraid of being arrested”.
A Supreme Court justice cancelled Bolsonaro’s passport minutes after the election result in a ruling related to a criminal case against the senator. He had until 11 a.m. to surrender the document to the federal police but failed to appear.
Bolsonaro has held Italian citizenship since 2023 and reportedly possesses a passport issued by the European country.
The Argentine news website Infobae reported that Bolsonaro had allegedly fled to Argentina on Monday night. He was expected to board a private jet in Puerto Iguazú bound for the US, but the aircraft never took off.
Bolsonaro, who has yet to concede defeat to Lula, posted a video on Monday in which he commented on the cancellation of his passport, saying: “I never thought about leaving the country.”
One of the senator’s brothers, former congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, who is living in self-imposed exile in the US, said in an interview last Friday that his brother should leave Brazil if he lost.
The Brazilian newspaper Folha de S.Paulo reported that allies within the Bolsonaro family’s inner circle had been told that he had indeed left for Argentina and intended to travel from there to the US.
As there is no record of him passing through any regular Brazilian immigration checkpoint, the federal police are trying to establish with Argentine authorities whether there is any record of his entry into the country.
The Argentine channel Todo Noticias reported that the senator had allegedly crossed the border into Argentina on foot and abandoned his plans to board the plane after news of his movements leaked.
Bolsonaro was ordered to surrender his passport in connection with a criminal case in which the federal police are investigating his possible involvement in a money-laundering scheme worth approximately £680 million ($905 million) involving betting companies.
The senator’s possible flight makes the future of Brazil’s far right following the presidential election even more uncertain. The family patriarch, Jair Bolsonaro, is under house arrest for attempting a coup, while one of his sons is in the US and the whereabouts of another remain unclear.
Eduardo Bolsonaro has an outstanding arrest warrant in Brazil after being sentenced to four years in prison for attempting to interfere in his father’s trial by lobbying Donald Trump to impose sanctions on the justices overseeing the case.
Political scientist Magna Inácio, a professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, believes a power vacuum could now emerge within the right wing.
“The resistance of Brazilian voters to handing victory to this more extremist camp sends a signal that the right’s leadership is now up for grabs,” she said.
Since Jair Bolsonaro, then a career congressman with few laws to his name, unexpectedly won the presidency in 2018, Brazil has effectively had no conventional right wing, only the far-right Bolsonarismo movement.
Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies Brazil’s emerging right wing, believes that the fact that three members of the Bolsonaro family are now potentially out of the picture could trigger a “shift in power” away from family ties.
“I think there is a tendency for power to move away from the sons,” Rocha said, noting that before the election, polls showed Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters preferred other potential candidates over his eldest son. These included Jair Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle Bolsonaro, who was recently elected to the Senate, and São Paulo governor Tarcísio de Freitas.
Flávio Bolsonaro reportedly did not want to run because he believed a presidential campaign would turn his life into “hell” and thought his re-election to the Senate was assured. However, with Eduardo, his father’s “plan A”, now living in the US, the senator was selected as the candidate.
Most observers agree that Flávio lacks his father’s charisma. During his 24-year political career, he passed very few laws as a state legislator and senator. His only previous attempt to run for executive office was in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro mayoral election, when he fainted during a televised debate and finished fourth.
Speaking in Brasília, Bolsonaro’s campaign chief, Senator Rogério Marinho, said he was surprised by reports that his candidate had left the country.
“Yesterday, we talked about the need for Flávio, with the 60 million votes he received, to assume this role as opposition leader … because we were given a mandate by a significant part of the population,” he said.
Asked whether he believed Bolsonaro could lead the opposition from abroad, Marinho replied: “María Corina Machado did it” in her country, Venezuela.
Even within a family frequently embroiled in legal troubles, Flávio stood out for facing longstanding criminal allegations, including suspicions that he had embezzled part of his staff’s salaries, as well as more recent accusations.
Despite these controversies, 48.21% of Brazilians voted for Flávio Bolsonaro on Sunday. Many analysts view this as both a vote against Lula and a vote for whoever Jair Bolsonaro had chosen.
Inácio believes the struggle over the Bolsonaro legacy will also unfold among family members who remain in Brazil, including Michelle and Bolsonaro’s other politically active sons, Senator-elect Carlos Bolsonaro and congressman-elect Jair Renan Bolsonaro, who have publicly demonstrated that they do not get along with their stepmother.
“Michelle clearly has a political project of her own, but she is likely to face strong resistance from her two stepsons in Congress. It is only a matter of time before tensions between them escalate,” the political scientist said.
