Analysis: Brazil Bombing Hurts Bolsonaro’s Comeback Efforts, Widening Political Divide

By Anthony Boadle and Eduardo Simões

BRASILIA (Reuters) – A failed bomb attack on Brazil’s Supreme Court appears to be uniting Brasilia against far-right radicalism and undermining a potential comeback for former President Jair Bolsonaro, who is fighting a court decision to ban him from the vote.

But such an institutional response will also fuel his supporters’ belief that they are being silenced, further polarizing the country, which has seen a wave of political violence since Bolsonaro’s rise to power in 2018.

The attack, which killed the bomber but caused no other casualties, brings into sharp focus the extent to which Brazil’s Supreme Court has become the target of the fury of the far right, driven by a deep sense that the court has tried to remove them from political power to drive away. arena.

It also comes after the re-election of Donald Trump, as the US president had raised hopes among some Bolsonaro supporters that this could fuel their revival.

As in the United States, both parties in Brazil believe that democracy is in danger.

Progressives see violence such as Wednesday’s bombs as a direct attack on Brazil’s democratic institutions, while the right insists that those very institutions are turning democracy against them.

In the aftermath of the explosions, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes doubled down on the view that far-right hate speech threatens Brazil’s democracy and fuels violence, grounds he has used to silence some of his fiercest critics on social media.

“It is not an isolated incident,” Moraes said on Thursday. “This has grown under the false cloak of criminal use of freedom of expression.”

He compared the bombing to the riots in the capital on January 8 last year, when Bolsonaro supporters rampaged through the court and other government buildings to protest his election defeat by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Wednesday’s explosions, which also blew up a car in a congressional parking lot, appear to have hardened consensus in Congress against a proposal to offer amnesty to participants in last year’s violent protests.

Senior sources from two of Brazil’s largest centrist parties in Congress said the amnesty proposal, which was already losing steam, now appears to be dead in the water.

“The possibility of amnesty for the people in the January 8 attack, and by extension for Bolsonaro, is over – end of discussion,” said Andre Cesar of consultancy firm Hold Assessoria Legislativa.

It could also be the death blow to Bolsonaro’s hopes of overturning his ban on running for office until 2030 over his baseless attacks on the legitimacy of the 2022 elections.

Any final decision on such an appeal would likely fall to the Supreme Court.

The bombing comes as federal police conclude an investigation into Bolsonaro’s alleged role behind the January 8 riots and a plot to overturn the election results with military support.

“This comes at a terrible time for Bolsonaro,” said Carlos Melo, a political scientist at the Insper School in Sao Paulo, referring to the pending criminal complaint.

Bolsonaro, who has denied any wrongdoing and called the criminal investigations a witch hunt, responded to the bombings in a message on

After allies’ strong performances in the municipal and U.S. elections, Bolsonaro’s party praised its chances of overcoming obstacles to enter the 2026 presidential race.

For now, however, it appears that the bombing in Brasilia has closed ranks against Bolsonaro and his supporters.

That could only fuel tensions further.

“If on the one hand Moraes comes out of this stronger… the downside is that you will also have people who become further radicalized,” said Creomar de Souza, head of the political consultancy Dharma.

(Reporting by Anthony Boadle in Brasilia and Eduardo Simoes in Sao Paulo; additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Maria Carolina Marcello; writing by Stephen Eisenhammer; editing by Brad Haynes and Lincoln Feast.)