Brazil’s Bolsonaro backs son’s residential bid, undergoes hernia surgery

Brazil’s former president Jair Bolsonaro endorsed his son ‌Flavio’s 2026 presidential bid on Thursday in a statement from a hospital where he ‍underwent a scheduled hernia operation that doctors said went smoothly.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes authorised Bolsonaro to leave prison, where he is serving a 27-year sentence for plotting a coup, for the surgery. Police were ordered to stay outside ⁠his room where computers and mobile phones were prohibited.

Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, 44, has said he wants to consolidate his father’s conservative legacy at the October 4 vote when he will try to unseat leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

“With the commitment of not allowing the popular will to be silenced, I make ‍the decision to nominate Flavio Bolsonaro as a precandidate for the presidency in 2026,” Jair Bolsonaro said in ‍a letter read out by Flavio in front of a hospital in the city of Brasilia where his father was being treated.

The 70-year-old former leader ‌has faced repeated health setbacks since surviving a near-fatal stabbing during the 2018 campaign, undergoing more than half a ‍dozen abdominal surgeries over the years.

Thursday’s operation, which lasted about three hours, was described by his doctor Claudio Birolini as expected and uneventful. Bolsonaro, who is expected to stay in hospital for five to seven days, was already in his room and awake, ‌the doctor ⁠told reporters.