Flávio Bolsonaro has said he will use the new right-wing majority in Brazil’s Congress to amend the country’s constitution and restore what he called genuine democratic rule. The Liberal Party (PL) candidate was speaking at a campaign event in Goiânia, in the central state of Goiás, on October 6.
He faces President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a run-off on October 25, after taking 47 per cent of the vote in the first round on October 4 against 45.1 per cent for Lula. Neither man reached the 50 per cent needed to win outright.
Bolsonaro told supporters his party would have the numbers to choose the presidents of both chambers and to change the constitution so that Brazilian institutions respected it again. He did not say which articles he wanted to amend.
The PL came out of the first round as the largest force in both houses. It elected 121 of the 513 federal deputies, the biggest single bloc since Brazil returned to democracy in 1988, and will hold 28 of the 81 Senate seats when the new legislature opens in February 2027.
That still falls short of what an amendment needs. A constitutional change must clear three-fifths of each chamber in two separate votes, or 308 deputies and 49 senators, which would oblige the PL to assemble a far wider coalition.
The candidate also returned to the harder parts of his law-and-order programme, promising half a million new prison places. He again backed lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 18 to 16, a change already awaiting a vote in the lower house.
He repeated his support for the chemical castration of rapists and paedophiles and said minors who committed serious crimes should answer for them as adults.
The Goiânia event was staged to seal the endorsement of Ronaldo Caiado, the former Goiás governor who finished fifth in the first round with more than 2.5 million votes. Caiado had questioned Bolsonaro’s credibility during the campaign and has now promised to mobilise his allies in the state against Lula.
He also restated his pledge to sign an amnesty covering both those convicted over the storming of Brazil’s institutions on January 8, 2023 and Jair Bolsonaro, the candidate’s father, who was handed a 27-year sentence for coup plotting and is serving it under house arrest in Brasília on health grounds.
The result will be read closely in Brussels. Brazil is the largest economy in Mercosur, whose interim trade agreement with the European Union has been provisionally applied since May 1, 2026, while the wider partnership deal still requires ratification in every member state.
