Ex-President Jair Bolsonaro Plan to Return to Brazil
Jair Bolsonaro, a former president, declared on Saturday that he will be coming back to Brazil “in the next weeks.”
Bolsonaro made his remark about going home for the first time in public during a rally at an evangelical church in Florida.
Since arriving in Orlando, Florida, on December 31, the day before his leftist challenger Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office as Brazil’s current president, the far-right politician has been living in the United States.
The right-wing group Yes Brazil USA planned Saturday’s event, which was held entirely in Portuguese for a Brazilian audience of Bolsonaro supporters residing overseas. All during the event, Jair Bolsonaro received cheers.
When Jair Bolsonaro could return to Brazil, where he is the focus of numerous inquiries into potential malfeasance, has been the subject of conjecture in recent weeks.
His initial diplomatic visa allowed him to enter the country for one month; it expired on January 31. His wife, a group of presidential advisers, and they all left Florida last month with him.
Bolsonaro’s attorneys recently disclosed to Brazilian media that they had requested for a tourist visa to extend his stay in the United States.
One of Bolsonaro’s sons, Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, told Brazilian reporters that he didn’t know when his father would return among the rumors over his plans. “He might never come back; it could be tomorrow or in six months. I’m not sure. He’s unwinding,” the son reported.
Bolsonaro no longer benefits from the special legal protection that requires any trial to take place at the Supreme Court for the first time in his more than three decades of political service, first as a politician and then as president.
Four inquiries into Bolsonaro have been referred to the trial court this past week after being in the Supreme Court for a week.
One of the questions being looked into is if Bolsonaro played any part in encouraging the incident on January 8 when his supporters broke into government facilities in the capital city of Brasilia and demanded that his election loss to Lula be annulled.
The large assembly of Bolsonaro supporters, who traveled to the capital from all around Brazil, is also the subject of an investigation into who organized and funded it.
Who instigated the crimes and who provided the funding for persons to fly to Brasilia is one of the investigations being conducted by the Brazilian court system.
