Bolsonaro Discusses Leaving PSL, Suggests Founding New Party

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro said that, on a scale of 0 to 100, he is 80 percent likely to leave his party, the PSL. And in that case, there is a 90 percent chance that he will found a new party.

The statement was given in an interview with TV Record’s program ‘Domingo Espetacular’, broadcast on Sunday night, November 3rd.

“I pay the bill for any third party embezzlement in the party. And the same thing happens with regard to party funds,” said Bolsonaro, who is clashing with the party’s national president, Deputy Luciano Bivar (PE).

The president’s crisis with his party has been growing in the wake of denunciations of the strawmen paper candidates scheme in the 2018 elections and gained even greater proportions when an audio from Deputy Delegado Waldir (GO) was disclosed calling Bolsonaro a “bum”.

“I want the party to have no issues in next year’s municipal elections and my potential re-election in 2022”.

According to Bolsonaro, either he takes command of the party’s actions or he may leave it. Regarding the latter option, on a scale of 0 to 100, he stated: “there’s an 80 percent chance of leaving and a 90 percent chance of founding a new party. One which will start from scratch. No television, no party fund, nothing.”

Bolsonaro said his dream would be to build a party by March and have approximately 200 candidacies throughout the country in next year’s municipal elections.

In the interview, the president once again attacked TV Globo and the governor of Rio, Wilson Witzel, over a story on Globo’s Jornal Nacional aired October 29th, which linked his name to the investigation of the murders of City Councilor Marielle Franco and her driver Anderson Gomes.

According to a testimony by the gatekeeper of Bolsonaro’s Condo, obtained by the TV news, Élcio Queiroz, the main suspect in the crime, said he wanted to go to Bolsonaro’s house on the day of the murders. However, the Chamber of Deputies’ attendance records show that Bolsonaro was in Brasília that day.

The day after the report was broadcast, the Rio de Janeiro’s Prosecutor’s Office said the gatekeeper had provided false information when citing Bolsonaro.

In the interview, Bolsonaro said that the federal solicitor general has ordered the prosecutor general to take the gatekeeper’s deposition, as well as those of public servants, such as the Civil Police detective, in order to clarify what occurred.

“You can’t have a network like Globo soil my name and just let it be. Rede Globo must explain who leaked a case that was being conducted under judicial seal.”

“It’s dirty journalism by TV Globo. I’ve even challenged them. TV Globo, gives me 15 minutes of live time in the Jaornal Nacional’, to explain this and more. Obviously, I’m going to demand that you tell me who leaked this to you,'” he added.

Bolsonaro again implied that the information in the case had been leaked by Governor Witzel. “He has been using government machinery to persecute me.”

Regarding his son Eduardo’s statements about a new AI-5 (Institutional Act Number Five – a dictatorship-era decree), one of the most repressive measures of the military dictatorship in Brazil, the president said that he is protected by parliamentary immunity.

“What is Article 53 of the Constitution for? It is written that senators and deputies are immune, civilly and criminally, by any words, opinions, and votes. Period. I reprimanded him because he mentioned the AI-5. But people take advantage of it, anything we do, they blow it out of proportion.”

Bolsonaro also said that his sons are not a hindrance to his government. “They have helped me a lot in identifying people who are not in our line. It happens. Some resignations have been made in the past. There is no one inside the Palace (Palácio do Planalto) telling me what I have to do.”

“Brazil has changed,” the president added. “Until recently, it was a country where the family did not exist. Where gender ideology was a hallmark. Where meritocracy did not exist either. It has changed. Today the president respects the secular state, but he is a Christian. He is a president, a government, that respects the family. If someone is not in this line, they must wait for PT to return in the future”.

Regarding the oil spill on the Brazilian coast, he said that all evidence suggests that the responsibility lies with the Greek ship the Bouboulina, owned by Delta Tankers.

“The bad news: what was collected is a small amount of what was spilled. So the worst is yet to come. We have information on a much greater catastrophe occurring as a result of this spill which, it seems, was criminal.”

On Sunday night, November 3rd, Bolsonaro went to the Italy-Paraguay football match for the U-17 World Cup, and again spoke about the Marielle case when he was approached by journalists, while greeting Paraguayan fans.

Bolsonaro said anyone claiming that he is attempting to obstruct the investigations “has nothing to do” and denied that he took the recording with the audio from the condominium’s lobby.

“I recorded the answering machine with the voice of the person who answered the phone. That’s it, that’s all. I didn’t take it, I didn’t do a backup, I didn’t do anything. And the answering machine’s memory has been with the Civil Police for a long time. Nobody wants to tamper with anything, not at all,” said Bolsonaro.

On Saturday, November 2nd, Bolsonaro had said that “we took it before it was tampered with, we took all the memory of the answering machine, which has been stored for years, the voice is not mine”.

On Sunday, he criticized those associating his name with the murder case of the city councilor and her driver. “I want to solve Marielle’s case too. But wanting to pin it on me is bad faith and lack of character, to say the least,” said Bolsonaro.

Last week, after being attacked by Bolsonaro for its story on the Marielle case, Globo reported in a statement that it lamented that the president had shown “not to be familiar with the mission of quality journalism and using unjust terms to insult those who do nothing other than provide accurate information”.

“The story pointed out, emphatically and by its own research, that the gatekeeper’s reports clashed with one fact: the presence of then deputy Jair Bolsonaro in Brasília that day, with two records on the voting list,” it stated.