Nov 28 2025| Nº. 184

Editorial

Brazil’s political landscape was jolted by a tumultuous sequence of events early this week when police were alerted that former president Jair Bolsonaro, under house arrest, had tampered with his ankle monitor. Officers arrived at his Brasília residence to find the device charred and partially melted, damage Bolsonaro eventually admitted was caused by a soldering iron he had used while under house arrest. The episode unfolded just days before he was scheduled to begin serving a 27-year prison sentence for orchestrating a plot to overturn the 2022 election. On Monday, November 24, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered Bolsonaro’s immediate arrest, writing that all precautionary measures had been exhausted. Later in the week, Moraes reaffirmed preventive detention for Bolsonaro and five other co-defendants. 

Abroad, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva used the closing press conference of the G20 summit in Johannesburg to underscore Brazil’s renewed diplomatic stature and the vitality of multilateralism. Lula linked the momentum of the G20 to the outcome of COP30 in Belém, arguing that both gatherings demonstrated global readiness to confront inequality, food insecurity, energy transition, and the governance challenges posed by artificial intelligence. He confirmed that the long-awaited EU–Mercosur trade agreement will be signed on December 20, and he voiced concern over the heightened U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, saying Brazil would raise the issue directly with President Trump. Citing the successful hosting of three major global forums—G20, BRICS, and COP—Lula portrayed Brazil as well positioned to shape the next phase of climate diplomacy and development policy, a sharp counterpoint to Bolsonaro’s political fortunes.

New polling suggests Lula’s message is landing with voters. The latest CNT/MDA survey, conducted November 19-23, shows the president expanding his lead in first-round matchups and defeating every tested opponent in hypothetical runoffs. Lula’s support has risen steadily since September, while Bolsonaro’s has weakened amid legal turmoil and declining favorability. The poll also records an uptick in positive evaluations of the federal government. With roughly a year before the 2026 campaign fully accelerates, the numbers reaffirm Lula’s strong position in a dispersed, polarized field—further complicating the political landscape for a right wing now thrown into deeper uncertainty by Bolsonaro’s arrest.

Highlights

• Devastation. The National Congress has altered 52 items of the law that deals with environmental licensing processes in Brazil. These 52 items had been vetoed from the original wording of the law by President Lula, but parliamentarians reintroduced them. Overturning the presidential vetoes gives greater freedom to agribusiness and reduces the mechanisms for consulting indigenous peoples. The changes to the so-called Devastation Bill are the result of a turbulent period in relations between the government and Congress.
  

• Strained relationship. President Lula is facing difficulties in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The presidents of both houses this week took positions hostile to the government's interests on several important issues. Part of the friction is due to the choice of Jorge Messias, a trusted Lula loyalist, to fill one of the open seats on the Supreme Court. David Alcolumbre, president of the Senate, wanted Senator Rodrigo Pacheco as the nominee. The hostile situation in Congress tends to strengthen the Centrão, a group known for its opportunistic policies that often negotiate parliamentary support in exchange for access to budget funds and favors in political appointments.
  

• Military Punishment. The Superior Military Court will judge the removal of the rank of officers imprisoned for their involvement in the coup plot. The vote, expected to take place in mid-2026, will involve the cases of Army Generals Augusto Heleno, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, and Walter Braga Netto, as well as Navy Admiral Almir Garnier. If the court considers that the military officers committed acts unworthy of officers, they will lose their ranks and be expelled from the Armed Forces. The judgment will be made by 15 justices, five civilians and ten military.

• Alzheimer's. General Augusto Heleno, former head of Bolsonaro's Institutional Security Office, sentenced to 21 years in prison for involvement in the failed coup, told the court that he has suffered from Alzheimer's since 2018. The allegation was made during a physical examination before he was taken to prison in a military unit. With this claim, the military officer seeks to obtain benefits in serving his sentence, just as Bolsonaro himself does when he cites health problems resulting from a knife attack he suffered in 2018.

• New violation. A television station filmed far-right congressman Nikolas Ferreira using a cell phone inside Bolsonaro's house, when the former president was under house arrest, before being taken to the Federal Police. Nikolas's action violates the rules imposed by the Supreme Court, which prohibited visitors from bringing cell phones into the former president's house. Congresswoman Erika Hilton filed a criminal complaint requesting the seizure of Nikolas's cell phone, which could lead to legal problems for this episode.

News from ABO and social organizations and movements:

Recognition. Brazilian activist Ana Paula Gomes de Oliveira, founder of the Mães de Manguinhos collective, received the Martin Ennals Prize this week in Geneva, Switzerland. This prize is considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the field of human rights. The Brazilian appealed to the international community for help for mothers who lose their children to violence.

Democracy. The Pact for Democracy, which brings together more than 200 civil society organizations, published a statement this week regarding the conclusion of the trial of the coup plot in Brazil. The text states that “with this historic decision, Brazil consolidates itself as an outlier on the international stage and an example of how democracies resist. It demonstrates, in practice, that institutions and civil society must operate assertively against processes of autocratization.” Read the note.

Campaign. Nearly three thousand people and civil society organizations are participating in a petition for the repeal of Decree 12.600/2025, which includes strategic stretches of the Madeira, Tocantins, and Tapajós rivers in the National Privatization Program (PND). The petitioners consider the document equivalent to a privatization of the Amazon rivers. Join the campaign.

New newsletter. WBO and Instituto Lavoro launched a new free monthly newsletter this week, in Portuguese, to internationalize the debate on labor and social rights. This publication is part of a collaborative effort over 12 months that aims to broaden the international reach of issues such as the growing informality and precariousness of the labor market, work on digital platforms, working hours, equal pay, union organization, and respect for human rights standards in the world of work. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive it free of charge by email.

Feature Article

The Historical Significance of Bolsonaro's Conviction

By Paulo Abrão*

On November 25th, the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court delivered a definitive sentence against former President Jair Bolsonaro, sentencing him to 27 years and 3 months in prison. He was found guilty of participating in the failed coup attempt that sought to prevent the current president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from winning the 2022 elections, taking office, and serving his legitimate third term. In addition to Bolsonaro, former ministers from his cabinet and high-ranking military commanders involved in the same coup plot were also convicted in the same trial.

The conviction took into account a strategy that included the unfounded challenge to the electronic voting machines used in Brazilian elections and the entire electoral system; the plotting of a plan to assassinate authorities; and the invasion and destruction of the Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Square), where the headquarters of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches are located in Brasília. Furthermore, other elements, such as the use of Brazilian Intelligence Agency (ABIN) to monitor political opponents and the creation of a Federal Police task force to hinder voters' access to the polls in strongholds in the Northeast where Lula had significant support, composed the scenario with which Bolsonaro and his supporters intended to stage the coup.

When the sentence was finally handed down, the former president was already in pre-trial detention, decreed due to flight risk and other violations of measures dictated by the courts during legal proceedings. He was initially kept under house arrest in Brasília. Then, he was transferred to the Federal Police headquarters, also in the capital, after confessing to using a welding machine to try to break his electronic ankle monitor. Due to his vulnerable health condition, resulting from a knife attack suffered during the 2018 election campaign, Bolsonaro will have unimpeded and permanent access to his personal physicians and will not be sent to a regular prison unit – unlike Lula, who was also held in a Federal Police unit in Brasília. The military commanders involved in the coup plot will serve their sentences in military barracks.

These individual punishments were imposed by the courts at the end of a legal process that complied with all required legal formalities and respected all judicial guarantees. These convictions are important, first, because they held each of those involved accountable individually. But the significance of these sentences goes far beyond mere individual accountability. The convictions place Brazilian democracy on a new higher, stronger, and more stable position compared to a past marked until now by the absolute impunity of those involved in the 1964 coup d'état and the 21 years of military dictatorship that prevailed in Brazil until 1985. In this sense, the imprisonment of Bolsonaro and his accomplices in the coup plot is a turning point.

The long road that led to these sentences was marked by difficult tests for Brazilian institutions. First, because the protagonists of the coup plot themselves had, and still have, the support of a significant portion of Brazilian society. A Datafolha poll from April showed that 42% of the population believed that Bolsonaro should not be imprisoned. And, in August, another poll, from the same institute, showed that 33% of voters would vote for Bolsonaro despite everything, although this last question in the poll has no meaningful effect, given that the former president is ineligible to run for office. What these numbers demonstrate is how far Brazil still is from solidifying democratic values ​​in a society that has lived with impunity for so many years. In this sense, the arrest of Bolsonaro and the entire coup-plotting core has an educational character, which may change the perception of that segment of Brazilians who still insist on equivocating about democratic values.

However, while this internal pressure from the far right created difficulties throughout the process with unfounded accusations that the judiciary was overstepping its bounds and carrying out a politically directed persecution, it was in the international arena that Brazil faced one of its toughest tests from the moment the U.S. government began to act in an openly hostile manner to intimidate the judges in the case. Provoked by lobbying from federal congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, one of the former president's sons, and other far-right activists living in the United States and are fugitives from justice, the Trump administration applied the Magnitsky Act against a Supreme Court minister and resorted to heavy tariffs on Brazilian products, in an attempt to free the coup plotters from prison.

The pressure was ineffective. Thanks to the competence of the Brazilian diplomatic service and the personal skill of President Lula, Brazil managed to reverse a large part of these measures and cool down U.S. hostility. Business leaders also exerted pressure. Furthermore, organized civil society made its voice heard through a delegation organized by the WBO, which traveled to Washington and New York in September and October to present details of the ongoing process and dynamics in Brazil.

Those who threaten Brazilian democracy suffered a severe blow with these convictions, but the risk remains and vigilance is necessary, as new political leaders from the far right are already organizing around an amnesty proposal with which they intend to replicate the impunity that has marked Brazil's recent history. In addition, next year's presidential election is likely to mobilize not only national conservative extremism, but also powerful international forces interested in destabilizing Brazil and turning Brazil into a laboratory for those working to undermine democracy from within in various parts of the world.

*Paulo Abrão é doutor em direito, ex-secretário Nacional de Justiça (2011-14), ex-secretário-executivo da Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos (2016-20) e diretor-executivo do WBO (Washington Brazil Office).

Feature articles express the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or WBO.