Patrons of a bar in Brasilia cheered and applauded Thursday as ex-president Jair Bolsonaro’s guilty verdict appeared on a giant screen in scenes reminiscent of a football match.
“Bolsonaro to jail!” shouted customers of Pardim, well-known as a gathering spot for leftists in a residential neighborhood of the capital of deeply politically divided Brazil.
“I burst into tears. This is a very important moment for which we’ve been waiting a long time,” Sofia Araujo, a 20-year-old student, told AFP on the bar’s terrace.
“I am very happy. Today we can celebrate because justice has been served,” she said.
Araujo told AFP she had also gone to Pardim in October 2022 to celebrate the election victory of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, from whom Bolsonaro was found guilty Thursday of trying to claw back power through force.
Bolsonaro was put on trial for steering a “criminal organization” that sought to keep him in office, including plotting to assassinate Lula and others.
He is now awaiting sentencing.
Bar owner Jarbas Campos Pardim said he bought 80 cases of beer and fired up the barbecue for Thursday’s hearing, during which the final two of five judges voted to convict the far-right former army captain.
The final verdict was 4-1.
“Today is conviction day, so it’s a day of celebration,” said Pardim, 47.
Nearby, the street outside the former president’s Brasilia home where he is under house arrest, was deserted except for a handful of supporters erecting a banner ahead of a planned vigil later Thursday.
The banner read: “Bolsonaro come back. Honk your horns,” in a message to passers-by.
Right-wing figures, meanwhile, expressed their outrage on social media platforms like X, where slogans such as “They want to kill Bolsonaro” and “Supreme persecution,” multiplied.
At Pardim, the mood was drastically different. Joao Marcelo Lopes Soares arrived early so he wouldn’t miss a moment of Thursday’s live broadcast.
“This September 11, 2025, is a historic day, a turning point in the fight against fascism,” said the 25-year-old, sporting the red-and-black jersey of Flamengo, Brazil’s most popular football club.
“Despite strong international pressure, especially from (US President Donald) Trump, I believe there’s justice in Brazil; we are a serious country,” Soares opined.
Trump has imposed a tariff of 50 percent on some Brazilian exports as punishment for what he has called the “witch hunt” against his far-right ally, and his administration has sanctioned one of the five Supreme Court judges in the case, Alexandre de Moraes.
Pardim patron Renato Alexandre Xavier, 53, prepared a parody version of Brazil’s national anthem for the occasion.
“Pariah turned criminal, jail is your destiny,” echoed one of the verses, which Xavier sang loudly, and proudly, in the bar.
“Hopefully he’ll rot in jail, though he’s already a rotten person,” Virgilio Soares, a 46-year-old sign language translator said of Bolsonaro’s fate.
AFP
