Bolsonaro arrest deepens chaos in search for Lula challenger in Brazil

Augusta Saraiva, Bloomberg News on Nov 23, 2025

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Jair Bolsonaro’s efforts to avoid jail went awry Saturday, when police detained the former Brazilian president after he took a soldering iron to a court-mandated ankle monitor and sparked fears that he planned to flee.

Now the question is whether Bolsonaro just torched the Brazilian right’s efforts to find a challenger to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in next year’s elections too.

For months, Bolsonaro’s movement has been frozen in political succession drama, waiting for the former leader who was banned from running even before his September conviction on coup attempt charges to grant his still-powerful endorsement to one of the prospective candidates jockeying for it.

The imminent start of a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup after his 2022 election loss had fueled hopes among allies and investors that he would soon need to make a decision. Instead, a video of Bolsonaro telling authorities that he’d tampered with his ankle monitor out of “curiosity” suggested that his attention remains centered on his own legal situation, with electoral considerations appearing a secondary matter.

At a Sunday custody hearing, Bolsonaro said he’d meddled with the device during a bout of “paranoia” induced by medications, according to a court filing. The former president said he’d had hallucinations that there was a listening device inside the ankle monitor.

The episode marked the culmination of a stunning downfall for the former Army captain whose 2018 rise to the presidency made him the Latin American face of the more brash version of right-wing politics surging to power across the world. It also came on the back of Donald Trump’s decision to grant Brazil relief from most of the punishing tariffs he’d imposed to try to help Bolsonaro — a massive victory for Lula, who’d already gained popularity amid the U.S. trade dispute.

“That’s too bad,” Trump said upon hearing of Bolsonaro’s arrest before moving to other topics, another signal that interest in his ally’s saga has waned.

The once-struggling Lula is suddenly in a position of strength, holding early polling leads over all potential challengers. And with the October 2026 vote fast approaching, Bolsonaro’s refusal to anoint Sao Paulo Governor Tarcisio de Freitas or anyone else is robbing contenders of valuable time to prepare for a campaign.

The governor of Brazil’s wealthiest state is a favorite of investors and business elites, who’ve scoured public speeches for signs he’ll challenge Lula.

But Freitas, a minister in Bolsonaro’s government, has signaled he’ll only run with the backing of his former boss — who despite high rates of rejection among independents still commands a huge base of support and polls better against Lula than anyone else.

Saturday’s events may make his immediate blessing even harder to win, even as Bolsonaro’s attorneys denied claims from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes and said they would appeal.

Moraes had given the green light for Freitas, who rushed to defend Bolsonaro in a social media post, to visit the former president in early December, amid a push from allies for a succession decision by the end of this year.

Alongside the arrest order, however, Moraes revoked that permission, restricting access to Bolsonaro, who’d been under house arrest since August.

The clamoring for Bolsonaro to make a decision has been matched only by worries, among some investors at least, that his reticence to give up control over the movement he built may lead him to throw his weight behind a member of his powerful political family instead.

But even sons Eduardo and Flavio seem in limbo now.

Eduardo, a congressman who’s publicly battled Freitas and opened the door to a run in 2026, is facing charges for obstructing justice after moving to the U.S. and lobbying Trump to punish Brazil over his father’s case.

At a prayer vigil in Brasilia on Saturday night, meanwhile, Flavio expressed bewilderment at his father’s apparent tampering with the ankle monitor.

“I keep wondering why he would’ve done that,” Flavio, a senator whose call for the vigil inspired fears from authorities that Bolsonaro would use it as cover to flee to a foreign embassy, said. “It might have been an act of desperation. Maybe he was ashamed in front of his family.”

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(With assistance from Dayanne Sousa.)

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