While former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is serving a long prison sentence at home, the battle rages in his own family, weakening the presidential candidacy of his eldest son Flavio three months before the election.
The crisis between former first lady Michelle Bolsonaro, 44, and Flavio, 45, threatens the unity of the conservative camp against left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will be seeking re-election.
In a cold war with her four stepsons for years, Michelle Bolsonaro published two videos last week with a total duration of almost half an hour. They had the effect of a bomb.
She accuses Flavio Bolsonaro of having humiliated her and attributes to her brothers, all involved in politics, a “coordinated attack” against her on social networks.
The name of Michelle Bolsonaro was circulating as a possible candidate for the presidency until Flavio announced, at the end of 2025, that the ex-president (2019-2022) had chosen him as a candidate.
While her son-in-law’s campaign is already weakened after revelations linking him to a banker accused of fraud, the former first lady exposed the family feud in front of her 8.2 million subscribers on Instagram.
“I have enormous respect for Michelle, I am convinced that we will overcome this difficult moment and that she will walk alongside us,” reacted Flavio Bolsonaro.
Such an outcome still seems distant.
Evangelicals and women
Michelle lives with Jair Bolsonaro, who is serving a 27-year prison sentence at home in Brasilia for attempted coup d’état in 2022. She takes care of his fragile health.
Third wife of the former head of state, she is a reference within the Liberal Party (PL), the Bolsonarist party. Particularly among women, while the female electorate is largely resistant to Flavio Bolsonaro (like his father), according to polls.
An ardent evangelical Christian, she also exercises strong leadership over the faithful of this movement, which has become a pillar of the conservative camp.
“Michelle Bolsonaro is no longer just the former first lady nor the wife of ex-President Bolsonaro. He is the person who ensures the link and organic communication with the evangelical camp,” explains the director of the Institute for the Study of Religion, Ana Carolina Evangelista, to AFP.
It has a “double importance for the expansion towards the evangelical camp and women”, she summarizes.
« Humiliation »
The crisis between Michelle and Flavio Bolsonaro also has as a background a fight for the nomination of allies in the local elections which will be held at the end of the year.
The breaking point came when she publicly disparaged the PL’s alliance with a local baron who had criticized her husband, and she received a call from Flavio.
“He was very rude. He disrespected me and treated me very badly,” she said in her videos, referring to “humiliation”.
The senator apologized to his mother-in-law and invited her to a meeting with contenders in the regional elections and PL parliamentarians which was held on Wednesday.
Michelle Bolsonaro was not only notably absent, but she resigned from the leadership of the women’s branch of the party. She could give up running for the Senate, according to the president of the PL, Valdemar Costa, who tried in vain to obtain a reconciliation.
Strategy
After several months neck and neck with Lula in the polls, Flavio Bolsonaro has fallen several points behind his rival since the end of May.
This is the effect of the publication of an audio recording in which the senator asked Daniel Vorcaro for money to finance a Hollywood film about his father. However, this banker is currently in prison, suspected of having set up a vast network of corruption in the upper echelons of power.
For Ms. Evangelista, Michelle Bolsonaro’s offensive is strategic: she is “sowing seeds” for a possible candidacy for the presidency in 2030.
And in 2026, “if Flavio’s candidacy becomes even less viable, she has already made it known that they have distanced themselves,” believes the analyst.
With no end to the crisis in sight, Bolsonarist executives are urging unity.
“Those who have a large family know: in the end, everything works out,” the leader of the PL group in the Senate, Carlos Portinho, is convinced.
