Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday launched a new political party, the Alliance for Brazil (AFB), under the banner of fighting corruption and advancing Christian values.
Bolsonaro’s former party, the right-wing Social Liberal Party (PSL) had undergone a leadership crisis earlier in the month, with Bolsonaro resigning from it on November 12 after large differences emerged between him and the party founder Luciano Bivar.
“We have the opportunity today to unite all Brazilians of good fait for the future of our fatherland,” Bolsonaro said at the launch held at a Brasilia hotel, Reuters reported.
According to the party’s manifesto, it represents the “dream and inspiration of people loyal to Bolsonaro,” and will serve as an alliance between “families, good people, workers, business, military, the religious and all those who want a really big Brazil.”
While under the PSL, which was the second-largest party in the last general elections, Bolsonaro had to grapple for control over its campaign funds and lacked executive powers over its decisions. Now, he will hope for a re-election bid in 2022 under the new party, for which he hopes to bring along the PSL's 53 lawmakers and three senators.
Bolsonaro would now become the APB’s party president while his eldest son, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, would be its vice president.
The APB will need 500,000 signatures by the end of April if it wants to register for the municipal elections in October 2020. However, as the electoral system only admits signatures gathered on paper, Bolsonaro has said that if digital signatures are not accepted, the APB will not campaign in the next elections as they would not have enough time to gather signatures.
Under Bolsonaro, the PSL transformed from a social-liberal party to a social-conservative one. His controversial reign saw the party split with its main wing, Livres, forming their own movement. The PSL were a relatively-small party until Bolsonaro took charge of it, riding the populist and anti-incumbency wave that brought him to power in 2018.
