Brazil: A year of Jair Bolsonaro

An assessment of Bolsonaro’s first year as president cannot be made without first looking at the context in which he was elected in October 2018. This presidential election was one of Brazil’s most crowded, uncertain, and polarised ever. It was marked by Bolsonaro being stabbed on the campaign trail a month before the first round; by former president Lula da Silva (2003-2011) being barred from running as he was serving a prison sentence for corruption, forcing his Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) to launch a last-minute frantic campaign for his substitute Fernando Haddad; and by the presence of a plethora of candidates from the centre-right and centre-left, who all failed to convince the electorate that they represented a viable alternative to either the PT or Bolsonaro.

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