Brazil’s Flavio Bolsonaro isolated

The moves by the 45-year-old senator have been met in Brazil with a mixture of derision, disbelief, and disapproval, even from within his own camp. The eldest son of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro was blindsided by his election defeat to leftist incumbent Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday, after leading a first-round vote earlier this month.

In a cloak-and-dagger operation, he sneaked out of Brazil via Argentina and Ecuador, after being ordered to surrender his passports due to several ongoing investigations against him.

Hours after his arrival in Florida, he posted a statement on social media declaring himself the “true president” of Brazil, before revising the wording a few minutes later to describe himself as the “leader” of the country.

A Bolsonaro ally who published an earlier version of the statement bearing Brazil’s old coat of arms, abandoned in the sixties, said it had been a ChatGPT error. - ‘Lunatic asylum Napoleon’ - The letter was met with outrage in Brazilian media, which described its tone as “coupmongering,” while politicians from across the spectrum called for the election results to be respected.

A column in the O Globo daily likened Flavio Bolsonaro to a “lunatic asylum Napoleon,” while the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper slammed the statement as “pathetic.” On the right, the powerful governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcisio de Freitas, quickly distanced himself.

De Freitas was a former minister under Jair Bolsonaro who had been tipped as the main candidate for the right before the former president chose his son. “We are democrats. The election result is sovereign.

What we have seen is the will of the majority of the population, which must be respected,” De Freitas said in an interview with the Estadao daily.

As speculation switched almost immediately to who would lead the right with Flavio out of the country, the governor -- a favorite in business circles -- said a 2030 run was “a possibility.”Rogerio Marinho, who coordinated Flavio Bolsonaro’s campaign, said there was “no evidence” of electoral fraud, as claimed by the defeated candidate.

Electoral court chief Kassio Nunes Marques, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Jair Bolsonaro, issued a statement to highlight the “secure electoral process.”Flavio Bolsonaro also said he would lead the opposition from abroad.

His self-proclamation as Brazil’s leader in exile “is not a misstep, it is a calculated move” intended to maintain his influence over the conservative camp in Brazil, said Geraldo Monteiro, a political scientist at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.