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Last year, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro said in an interview that Brazil’s next president would have to commit to pardoning his father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is under house arrest for having attempted a coup d’état in 2022. And more: When the Supreme Court ruled the pardon unconstitutional, as it inevitably would, he said that president would have to push it through regardless, even if it meant interfering in the judiciary with “the use of force”.
Well, it looks as if this might actually happen: Flávio Bolsonaro himself is currently the front-runner heading into the presidential runoff on Oct. 25.
The eldest son of Jair Bolsonaro, Flávio became a state congressman in 2003 at the age of 21, and later won a seat in the Senate. His brothers, Eduardo and Carlos, are also politicians. Their father entered Brazilian politics in 1989 and served seven terms as a federal congressman, during which, according to The Economist, he was “an obscure congressman whose main talent was causing offence”. The magazine also called the future president “anti-gay, pro-gun, and an apologist for dictators who tortured and killed Brazilians between 1964 and 1985”.
Apparently, Flávio is even more nefarious.