Speech by PL president reignites discussion about new right-wing party

The recent statements by the president of the PL, Valdemar Costa Neto, comparing the President of the Republic Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the former president Jair Bolsonaro have rekindled a discussion that had been almost extinguished in national politics in recent months: the electoral gap of a party that corresponds to the values ​​of the portion of the population defined as conservative in customs and liberal in the economy.

The failure to organize the Aliança pelo Brasil, a party created in 2019 by Bolsonaro’s base whose target was the 2022 electoral dispute, caused the issue to gradually lose vigor. The lack of authentic adherence to principles and the threat of infidelity from leaders of current parties that include right-wingers, however, have made some of the right-wing think about rescuing the plan.

In a video released on social media shortly after the controversy with Costa Neto, Bolsonaro reported what he told the president of his party over the phone: “If it continues like this, you will implode the party.”

The need for a new party is felt mainly by the group of voters that has seen the greatest rise in Brazil in recent years: those opposed to progressive radicalism and identitarianism, generally liberal in the economy and increasingly skeptical in relation to ideological discourses propagated as absolute truths by power groups. Bolsonaro’s popularity is one of the main assets for a party with this ideology to be viable in Brazil.

Economist Marcos Cintra, former federal deputy and vice-president of Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV), translated this feeling on Tuesday (16), in a LinkedIn post, stating that “Bolsonaro needs a party: his” .

“The leadership and charisma that Jair Bolsonaro has achieved do not combine with submission to party owners, such as PL’s Valdemar,” said Cintra. “Regardless of preferences or disgust, every Brazilian liberal has the obligation to follow him, as he embodies the only concrete hope of disrupting the system that put Lula back in power and canceled his only real opponent, Jair Bolsonaro. There is no reason for Jair Bolsonaro is not gathering his followers into a truly liberal party. There is no shortage of supporters, even those who have already diverged from his leadership, as was my case,” he added.

For Cintra, “only Bolsonaro is capable of gathering forces to implode the woke, ‘progressive’ and undemocratic system to which we are gagged.”

On the same day, Sérgio Camargo, former president of Fundação Palmares, made a similar post on the X network, with thousands of likes, attacking Costa Neto’s statements: “The creation of an authentic conservative party is urgent, otherwise we will continue being the homeless people of Brazilian politics, dependent on the hospitality of those who don’t like us and welcome us for convenience and money. The right has people but no party. It’s a paradox.”

On Thursday (18), musician Roger Moreira, from Ultraje a Rigor, also posted on X a response to deputy Marcel van Hattem (Novo-RS) with the same idea: “I would love for you, Nikolas [Ferreira], [Carlos] Jordy and a few others who are aware would found a truly right-wing party,” he said, in a post with thousands of likes.

Abroad, a new right rose in the wake of parties; in Brazil, Aliança sank

Brazil is a rare case of a country in which the new right emerged without its own party. With the exception of the United States – which, with the peculiarities of its two-party system, elected Donald Trump for the old Republican Party – the rise of the new right abroad was almost always linked to the creation or growth of a right-wing party.

This is the case, for example, in Spain, where the Vox party, founded in 2013, gained strength along with the popularity of its leader, Santiago Abascal; from Argentina, where the Partido Libertario, created in 2018, led Javier Milei to the Presidency in 2023; and Portugal, where Chega, founded in 2019, has the chance to become the largest party in parliament in the March elections this year. All of these parties and politicians have been unanimously referred to by the left-leaning press as representatives of the “extreme right”, even though they essentially only support values ​​historically accepted in Western democracies.

In Brazil, many of those who feel orphaned by an authentically right-wing party are not satisfied with the Novo, which is liberal in the economy and defends freedom of expression, but refuses to take a position on issues such as abortion and drugs. Legends such as União, Progressistas and Republicans, although they increasingly include names from the right, suffer from the same distrust as the PL.

There are other party founding initiatives underway led by politicians who identify as right-wing. Currently, the most popular of these is the Missão party, created by the leaders of the Movimento Brasil Livre (MBL). The group is, however, facing strong resistance among many conservatives, not only because of the conflicts it has had over the last few years with important names in this political field, but because of its lack of definition regarding some issues of customs.

What happened to the Alliance for Brazil party project?

In 2019, Bolsonaro’s base planned the creation of the Alliance for Brazil party, which ended up not being successful. In 2022, the process for founding the party was shelved because the 492 thousand signatures needed to continue the process were not reached. The reason, according to a source heard by People’s Gazette who preferred not to identify himself, was, essentially, disorganization.

In 2019, those responsible for collecting signatures were slow to coordinate the distribution of the forms. With the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the delay in obtaining signatures worsened due to social isolation rules, which made the creation of the party even more difficult.

The signature collection process continued anyway, but was marked by conflicts and wear and tear among those mainly responsible, in addition to internal disorder itself – which includes, for example, lack of staff, insufficient quantity of printed forms and the absence of an account bank with centralized financial resources for the creation of the party.

Aliança sank once and for all when Bolsonaro himself signaled to those responsible for the process that he was giving up the party. Officially, the project has not been extinguished. Its most recent leaders are businessman Felipe Belmonte and jurist Admar Gonzaga, former minister of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE).

In recent days, after the controversy with Costa Neto, opposition parliamentarians who did not want to be identified have already shown interest in reviving the idea of ​​a right-wing party – but, this time, with other coordinators. If they move forward with the idea, they could benefit from a bill that promises to facilitate the creation of parties by allowing the collection of electronic signatures for the creation of new parties. In December, the proposal passed through the Chamber’s Constitution and Justice Committee (CCJ).