The political consequences of the January 8 assault on Brazil’s institutions have already begun to be felt and some of the newly elected governors are already making their departures to other parties in an attempt to distance themselves from bolsonarismo in view of future electoral processes at the national level.
The change of acronyms in Brazil is quite common, with former president Jair Bolsonaro being a case in point. In his more than three decades in politics, he has been part of a dozen parties, even going so far as to be in none shortly after being elected in 2018 by the Social Liberal Party (PSL) and waiting until the last moment to join the Liberal Party (PL) in search of his failed reelection.
The reelected governor of Rio de Janeiro flaunting his closeness to Jair Bolsonaro, Cláudio Castro, is already negotiating his exit from the PL, at a time when there is not only less hostility towards President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but also a certain closeness.
In Rio, although the clashes between Castro and the PL have been a constant, the differences between him and the party over who should preside the Legislative Assembly have finally triggered the divorce. However, the party maintains that the governor’s haste is motivated by his desire to disassociate himself from Bolsonarism and establish relations with Lula’s government.
In addition, there is the bad relationship he has with Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, one of the ex-president’s sons, who does not forgive him for having disassociated himself from Bolsonarismo’s first swords when he won re-election as governor.
Despite the rapprochement with the new government, Castro is far from joining the Workers’ Party (PT) and the ultraconservative Progresistas, where the Bolsonarist branch is much smaller. Union Brasil, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD), new partners of the PT, have also opened their doors to him, reports ‘O Globo’.
The PSD could also be the new home of the governor of Sao Paulo, Tarcísio de Freitas, who has already appointed the founder of this party and former minister with former president Dilma Rousseff, Gilberto Kassab, as secretary of government. Both met in January with Lula. «Now we are partners,» he said of him and the president.
On the opposite side is the governor of Minas Gerais, Romeu Zema, of the libertarian Novo, who is considering joining the PL and consolidating himself as Lula’s main opponent for the next elections, a vacancy now available after President Bolsonaro, who is in the United States, finds it difficult to run in the face of the more than foreseeable judicial processes that will be presented to him.
The president of the PL himself, Valdemar Costa Neto, has not hidden his interest in having Zema, one of Bolsonaro’s assets in the electoral campaign for the second round. Next week a meeting is also scheduled with liberal deputies of Minas Gerais, who maintain that Novo «does not value» the governor, in order to solve a series of disagreements in the state Assembly.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
