By Manuela Andreoni, Luciana Magalhaes and Maria Carolina Marcello
BRASILIA – After Brazil’s top prosecutor charged former President Jair Bolsonaro with plotting a 2022 coup, the ex-president’s political future may hinge on a legislative blitz to change laws governing how politicians are banned from running for office.
A conviction by the Supreme Court, which is overseeing the case, could land Bolsonaro in prison and create another obstacle for his plans of running for president next year. An anti-corruption law that the far-right firebrand voted for in 2010, as a lawmaker, bars anyone convicted by an appeals court from running for public office.
Bolsonaro was charged on Tuesday evening with leading a “criminal organization” aiming to overthrow Brazil’s 40-year-old democracy after he lost the 2022 election to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whom they planned to poison.
Lawyers for Bolsonaro denied on Tuesday the he had supported any movement attacking Brazil’s democratic institutions. He has called the case a political witch hunt conducted by biased courts and investigators.
Aides close to Bolsonaro acknowledge in private that he faces long odds to clear his name before the Supreme Court, so the former president is focusing his efforts on rallying allies in Congress to clear his path for a political comeback.
Bolsonaro huddled with allied senators on Tuesday about plans to revise the so-called “clean record law” and other potential obstacles to his 2026 candidacy. He was expected to meet with lower house lawmakers on Wednesday.
“The clean record law today only serves one purpose, to persecute right-wing politicians,” Bolsonaro said in a video posted to social media this month. “The ideal thing would be to reverse the law so no one else is persecuted, and the person who decides whether they will elect a candidate or not is you.”
Few politicians have benefited more from the law than Bolsonaro himself, who pushed for its passage as part of an anti-corruption crusade that carried him from the back benches of Congress to the presidential palace.
Lula, long one of Brazil’s most popular politicians, was barred from the 2018 elections by the clean-record law, clearing Bolsonaro’s path to win the race.
The leftist leader had been convicted that same year for his alleged role in a sprawling bribery scheme involving his Workers Party. The Supreme Court later annulled that conviction.
The new charges now before the top court are not the only challenge to his plans for a political comeback.
In 2023, Brazil’s federal electoral court (TSE) barred Bolsonaro from public office until 2030 for abusing his political power in two different instances during his 2022 presidential campaign, including his attack on the legitimacy of the country’s electronic voting system.
His allies are also proposing changes to laws that could, for example, reduce how long a politician can be blocked from running for office. It is not clear if those bills can gain traction in Congress, but some conservatives have been emboldened by Lula’s plunging popularity.
A February poll released by Datafolha revealed only 24% of Brazilians approve of the Lula administration amid rising food prices — the lowest-ever approval across his three presidential terms.
Bolsonaro allies have also attacked the Supreme Court as biased against his right-wing movement in an effort to stoke a legislative backlash.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s Trump Media & Technology Group and video-sharing platform Rumble sued Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the Bolsonaro case, over accusations of illegal censorship.
(Reporting by Manuela Andreoni, Luciana Magalhães and Maria Carolina Marcello; Writing by Manuela Andreoni; Editing by Brad Haynes and Franklin Paul)
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