The outgoing president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has travelled to the United States on an Air Force state flight, bound for Orlando, Florida. The outgoing head of state will not participate in the inauguration ceremony of his successor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in which the presidential sash is handed over according to institutional practice.
It will be the first time since 1988 that the outgoing president will not be in the country during the transition of powers. According to press reports, the president traveled alone and should remain abroad for at least the next three months.
Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro seems poised to skip the inauguration of his successor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Jan. 1, shunning a traditional power handover ceremony in Brasilia to spend New Year’s Eve celebrations in the US. ” Over my dead body will i hand over power to a criminal like Lula” Says Bolsonaro
While Bolsonaro has kept mum in public about his plans, Brazil’s official gazette on Wednesday published an authorization for an army official to travel to the US in the final days of the year as part of “a security detail for the president and his family during a trip to Miami.”
Since his defeat to Lula on Oct. 30, Bolsonaro has been debating whether to take part in the highly symbolic ceremony where the green-and-yellow presidential sash is passed from one leader to the next. In a TV interview earlier this month, Vice President Hamilton Mourao advised Bolsonaro to complete the task as an act of nobility and defiance, and declined to take on the responsibility, saying it isn’t the job of a vice president.
Bolsonaro’s decision will be reminiscent of Donald Trump’s skipping Joe Biden’s swearing in ceremony in 2021 and Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner ditching the inauguration of Mauricio Macri in 2015. It will also cap a politically convoluted year in Brazil that saw supporters of the outgoing president protesting the result of Lula’s razor-thin victory across the country.
