Family Passports

Flávio Bolsonaro had until eleven on Tuesday morning to hand over his passports. He did not. His allies could not say where he was. His campaign chief insisted he was still in Brazil; a pilot said his name was on the passenger list of a jet in Argentina, where there was no record of his arrival. He had told an ally he was “cooling off”. Without saying where. By early afternoon, allies were telling the Brazilian press he was on his way to the United States. Police had cancelled his Brazilian passports and alerted border authorities. They do not last long in this family: his father had to surrender his in 2024; his brother Eduardo’s was cancelled a few weeks ago.

On Sunday evening, he had found it impossible to accept the election result: the Supreme Court had extended voting by two hours because of transport disruption. His own campaign had also asked for extra time, in some areas, because of the rain. On Monday, he had sworn he had never considered leaving. Police had just served him with an order to surrender his documents outside his father’s home, where the former president is under house arrest over the attempted coup. The order concerns an investigation into suspected money laundering linked to betting businesses; he blames a remark by his brother, who had advised him to leave if he lost. “Would this have happened if I’d won?” It is a serious question. It carries more weight, though, if the man asking it can be found.

Lula has a passport story of his own. In January 2018, the day after his conviction was upheld on appeal, a judge seized his passport on the eve of a trip to Ethiopia for a conference on hunger, fearing he might seek asylum. He got it back a week later, went to prison two months later and has since won two elections. The lawyer who handed that passport to the police was Cristiano Zanin. Today he sits on the Supreme Court and is the judge who granted those two extra hours.