Brazil’s conservative-dominated congress has given President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva two severe political setbacks within the space of a single day, voting to reduce the prison sentence of convicted coup plotter and former president Jair Bolsonaro while simultaneously rejecting Lula’s nominee to the country’s supreme court — a double humiliation that lays bare the scale of the challenge awaiting him in October’s presidential election.
The Vote to Cut the Sentence:
In a session on 30 April, Brazil’s lower house overturned Lula’s veto of an amnesty-adjacent bill with 318 votes — comfortably above the 257 required. The senate followed, approving the override by 49 votes against the 41 needed.
The bill, which had first passed congress in December before Lula vetoed it in January — a symbolic act timed to mark three years since Bolsonaro’s supporters ransacked the capital, Brasília — would, if confirmed by a supreme court justice, reduce Bolsonaro’s sentence from 27 years and three months to 22 years and one month.
More consequentially, it could dramatically shorten the period he must serve under a closed prison regime. Legal experts estimate that window could fall from four to six years down to two to four years, potentially allowing Bolsonaro to move to an open regime as early as 2028.
That reduction will not be automatic. Bolsonaro, who remains under house arrest, must have his lawyers file a formal sentence review application with the supreme court. The new law also reduces the sentences of approximately 280 others convicted in connection with the attempted overthrow of the 2022 election result, in which the incumbent Bolsonaro was defeated by Lula.
A Historic Supreme Court Defeat:
Hours before the veto was overturned, the senate made history of a different and deeply damaging kind for the Lula administration. It rejected his nominee to the supreme court, Jorge Messias — the government’s current solicitor general — marking the first time in more than 130 years that a presidential nominee to the country’s highest court has been turned away. The last such rejection occurred in 1894.
Messias had drawn controversy during his senate confirmation hearing when he delivered an anti-abortion address, widely seen as a calculated appeal to Brazil’s substantial evangelical Christian community, which accounts for 26.9% of the population and has been one of Bolsonaro’s most reliable political constituencies. The gambit failed to secure enough votes.
The rejection is broadly attributed to a political arrangement between senate president Davi Alcolumbre and the Bolsonaro-aligned opposition, compounded by the resentment generated by Lula’s refusal to nominate a candidate backed by Alcolumbre himself. Alcolumbre has reportedly told close allies he will block any new confirmation hearing until after the election — a delay with potentially transformative consequences.
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The timing could hardly be more significant. With multiple supreme court justices expected to retire over the next four years, and with two already appointed by the elder Bolsonaro, a victory for senator Flávio Bolsonaro — Jair’s son and most likely presidential candidate — could hand the Bolsonaro family effective control of six of the court’s eleven seats.
Lula has not yet commented publicly on either decision. When he vetoed the sentence reduction bill in January, he was unambiguous in his reasoning. Cutting sentences for those who attempted a coup, he warned, would embolden future actors to do the same. “This man must remain in prison,” he said of Bolsonaro at the time. He has also not indicated whether he intends to put forward a new supreme court nominee.
Both outcomes — the veto override and the court rejection — had to some degree been anticipated by political observers. But together they carry a weight beyond their individual significance. Polls currently show Lula running virtually neck-and-neck with Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of October’s contest, and the events of 30 April are being interpreted across Brazil as confirmation that the president faces a far steeper electoral climb than his 2022 victory might have suggested.
That Flávio Bolsonaro participated in the very vote that reduced his father’s sentence will not have been lost on Brazilian voters.