The ex-president’s eldest son announced Friday that his father, who is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup and is banned from public office, has chosen him to lead the country’s powerful conservative movement, shaking up the 2026 election race.
But suddenly Flavio Bolsonaro announced Sunday that he was willing to “negotiate” a possible withdrawal of his own candidacy.
“It is possible that I won’t go through with it until the end. I have a price for that. I’m going to negotiate,” he told reporters outside an evangelical church in Brasilia.
The 44-year-old said he would provide more details on Monday during a meeting with conservative leaders, but the comments nevertheless are likely to draw questions from both within and outside the movement.
Jair Bolsonaro’s supporters in Congress have been trying to pass a bill that would pave the way for amnesty for the former president and his supporters convicted for the January 2023 assault on government buildings in Brasilia.
The former president’s wife Michelle Bolsonaro, whose name has been floated as a possible candidate from the conservative camp, has thrown her support behind her stepson Flavio.
But his anointment by his father has been given a cool reception by the conservative establishment in Brazil, which had its sights set on Tarcisio de Freitas, the governor of Sao Paulo, the country’s economic heartland.
Sao Paulo’s major stock exchange suffered its sharpest drop in four years on Friday following the announcement of Bolsonaro’s political heir.
But Flavio, seen as a hardliner on law-and-order issues and a loyal supporter of his father, suggested he was prepared to lean toward the middle.
“You are going to discover a different Bolsonaro, a much more centrist Bolsonaro,” added the senator, who is considered more moderate than his father.
Flavio Bolsonaro claimed to have secured the support of de Freitas, and denied any “fragmentation” on the Brazilian right.
Other figures in the conservative camp meanwhile are maintaining their presidential aspirations for next year.