Since the night of March 14, 2018, when two shooters trailed the car carrying Marielle Franco, a black, gay and leftist politician in Rio de Janeiro, and sprayed the vehicle with bullets, killing Franco and her driver, a question has haunted Brazil: who was behind the murder?
After two former policemen, linked with a militia, were arrested for Franco’s assassination, a photograph appeared on social media showing President Jair Bolsonaro embracing one of the alleged killers. Then came another revelation: Mr. Bolsonaro’s eldest son, Flavio, a federal Senator known as “01”, had employed the wife and mother of a former policeman who ran the militia and has been absconding since the murder.
For a long time, there have been rumours about the Bolsonaro clan’s links with the illegal militia. The President and his three sons — all elected officials — from his first wife have denied the allegations of connection with criminals in their inimitable style: dismissing it as “fake news”. But last week, the rumours were back in circulation as Rio’s police searched the addresses of Fabricio Queiroz, a former adviser to Mr. Flavio (in photo) and a friend of the President for decades. As per local media, warrants based on suspicions of money laundering and embezzlement also targeted a swanky shop owned by Mr. Flavio and relatives of Ana Valle, the President’s second wife (He is in third marriage now).
For a politician who ran his election campaign as an “outsider” who would “bust corruption”, Mr. Bolsonaro is now in trouble as a probe into money-laundering zeroes in on his immediate family. But the Bolsonaros remain defiant. After his shop was visited by the police, Mr. Flavio claimed the investigation was a “conspiracy” to “destabilise” Brazil and force his father out of power. The same day, as a reporter asked the President about the probe, Mr. Bolsonaro responded by launching a homophobic attack on the journalist. “You look terribly like a homosexual,” barked Mr. Bolsonaro.
Under pressure
A master of diversionary tactics, Mr. Bolsonaro generally succeeds in obfuscating issues and firing up his far-right base with outrageous comments. But now, with Mr. Flavio under the scanner, even some allies are breaking ranks with him. Janaina Paschoal, a lawyer who led the impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff and played a crucial role in propelling Mr. Bolsonaro into presidency, said Mr. Flavio has to be punished. “Unfortunately, it seems that Flavio committed embezzlement and used officials to divert public money...,” said Ms. Paschoal, a Sao Paulo State representative.
In a year, Mr. Bolsonaro has managed to alienate his allies by giving important roles to his sons. While his second son, Carlos, known as “02”, has been in-charge of the President’s social media, the youngest one, Eduardo, known as “03”, almost got appointed as the Ambassador to the U.S. But with Mr. Carlos attacking top officials on social media and Mr. Eduardo acting like the de facto Foreign Minister, there has been a backlash from the leaders Mr. Bolsonaro’s Social Liberal Party (PSL) .
The differences exploded in public recently when at a parliamentary hearing on “fake news”, a number of PSL leaders accused the President’s sons of abusing them on social media with fake news. Mr. Eduardo responded by making fun of the weight of PSL parliamentary leader Joice Hasselman, who, in turn, called him “useless, stupid and [of] bad character”.
President Bolsonaro and his sons sunk Brazilian politics to a new low in 2019, but at the end of the year, the clan was under pressure too: Mr. Eduardo, who was anointed by far-right ideologue Steve Bannon to head The Movement in South America, had to withdraw his ambassadorial nomination; Mr. Carlos, who is accused of running a fake news racket on social media, deleted all his accounts as Parliament investigated the phenomenon; Mr. Flavio, who has been under suspicion for months, is now a person of interest in a corruption scandal that may expose the politician-militia nexus in Rio. And Mr. Bolsonaro’s ratings have dropped to 29%, the lowest for a President in the first year.
Cornered he is, but Mr. Bolsonaro, who will be the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations in January, hasn’t lost his ability for shocking remarks. After spending a night in hospital following a fall in the bathroom on Christmas Eve, Mr. Bolsonaro, 64, said he had a “partial memory loss”.
With a corruption probe knocking on his door, this could be his line of defence.
Shobhan Saxena is a journalist based in Sao Paulo
