Will “Son No. 1” become the second president from the Bolsonaro family? Flavio, the eldest of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s five children, is neck-and-neck in the polls with incumbent President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the country heads to the polls Sunday in the first round of the presidential election. Jair Bolsonaro is likely following his 45-year-old son’s campaign closely.
For the patriarch, this is not just a matter of family pride. Sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison after his convicting for plotting a coup following his 2022 election defeat, the former president is surely rooting for his son. But first, the eldest son must defeat incumbent President Lula.
That is not a foregone conclusion. Flavio Bolsonaro is widely considered a shadow of his father. He is not a “charismatic and popular leader", said Andreza Aruska, director of the Brazil Institute at King’s College London.
While he is running under the Bolsonaro banner, the son has also had to maintain some distance from his convicted and jailed father on the campaign trail. But it’s still the power of the family name that has managed to catapult Flavio Bolsonaro into a statistical dead heat with Lula in the opinion polls. At the official launch of his campaign in July, an AI-generated video of his jailed father endorsing the son was screened on stage.
The video sparked a storm, with Brazil’s Supreme Court demanding an explanation about the appearance of the AI clone of Jair Bolsonaro, who is barred from making public statements while serving his sentence. The former president had to deny authorising the use of his image and voice for the deepfake video. Read moreBrazil's Jair Bolsonaro denies authorizing deepfake for election message Opting for a legally risky video screening in a country where the use of deep fakes is as widespread as it is strictly regulated does not exactly signal a break with Bolsonaro senior.
Watch moreFocus: What's real and what's fake? How AI is impacting Brazil's election race But Flavio Bolsonaro is no stranger to public scrutiny. Last month, it emerged that Candidate Bolsonaro was under investigation for alleged corruption and money laundering linked to the upcoming film “Dark Horse”.
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