No Place for Evita Perón: A First Lady as President in Brazil Is an Idea with No Future

ADRIANO BARCELOS

In a family where the father and three sons are politicians, and a fourth is already testing the waters for candidacy, it is quite unusual that, with two years left until the 2026 election, former First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro is being tested and retested as a potential candidate for President of the Republic. This week, once again, the PL commissioned popularity tests regarding her through its own institute, Paraná Pesquisas.

The bet on Michelle sends several signals, none of them favorable to Jair Bolsonaro and the far-right. Not that the projections about Michelle aren’t positive—they are, perhaps too positive: in practice, she is a figure who inherits, at the outset, almost the entirety of her husband’s political base. Ironically, it is behind closed doors that the problems mount: Jair Bolsonaro himself is erratic when it comes to his wife.

There are numerous instances where he evades, sidesteps, or even rebuffs enthusiasts of Michelle ‘26. He may feel that the excitement about his wife politically diminishes him, or that she is not capable of running a campaign, or even fear an eventual electoral success that would leave him subordinate for four years—something Bolsonaro’s confessed machismo could never conceive. Choose your favorite explanation and add a dash of family drama with the three protégés, Flávio, Eduardo, and Carlos. You’d have to be deaf not to hear the murmurs of discomfort over the young stepmother’s prominence.

If Lula were at home in shorts and slippers, and this plot were on the living room TV, he would probably watch it all while eating popcorn. Michelle’s candidacy has an air of desperation within the far-right. The role of First Lady is a figurative one. We are not in Argentina; Michelle is not Evita Perón, Bolsonaro is not Juan Domingo, and neither is tango the Brazilian most popular dance. Today, promoting a former First Lady as a candidate for President of the Federative Republic of Brazil is nothing short of fanciful. Even if the PL’s polls give her 30% of voting intentions, she remains far from the other minimum 20% that would enable her to ascend a hypothetical Planalto’s ramp.

Even if, at first glance, a Michelle presidency might appear as a feminine advancement for the Right, at best, if Bolsonaro made a 180-degree turn in his behavior, she would come across as a politically hollowed-out president, colonized by her husband. The Presidency of the Republic demands a series of agreements and support across various sectors. She would certainly have the backing of evangelicals, but little is known about what the financial market, industry, and social movements think of her. She is known enough to be remembered, but not enough to be elected by 50 million people. Michelle is a repeated face, but she has never submitted her ideas, whatever they may be, to public scrutiny. That is where the rejections stem from.

The Temptation to Follow Dynasties Seems to Come from Imperial Brazil

Brazil is the land of equivalences, and false ones thrive most abundantly in these fields where anything grows once planted. Thus, those eager for change attempt to see also Janja Lula da Silva as a President – but it doesn’t exist. The late Brazilian Empire left in the minds of many a taste for dynasties. The Republic, this anodyne idea for the mind and insipid flavour for the soul, is poor in symbols. Even in the revelry of Momo, a king is sought.

The fact is that a portion of the festive left is already buying into the narrative of a queen for Lula, something that seems even more delusional than Michelle ‘26. It is not our tradition; it will not happen. The far-right, without Bolsonaro, is searching for direction, and each day away from power, its electoral reserves dwindle, if not in quantity, then in enthusiasm. In the end, Michelle will probably not be a candidate for president. A Senate seat, elected from the distant and deep people (contains irony) of the Federal District? A possibility. Tarcísio, the well-positioned chameleon who has already worked with Dilma Rousseff and was endorsed by Bolsonaro, would have to forgo a more-than-assured re-election as governor of S?o Paulo to engage in a battle against Lula. Will he?

It is not known, but that is a topic for another conversation.