Marie Kolling, Jair Bolsonaro and the culture of corruption, March 2019
In the presidential election of October 2018, the far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro was portrayed by his supporters in the guise of various superheroes, especially the strong man who will singlehandedly save Brazil from chaos and decline, not least from the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, or PT, which governed Brazil from 2003-2016).
Bolsonaro’s victory signalled the abandonment by Brazilians of the established political parties. Bolsonaro had recently switched to a tiny party, the Social Liberal Party (PSL), and presented himself as a political outsider and anti-establishment politician, a politician free from corruption who would restore law and order and bring the country back to the conservative values that once prevailed.
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