Brazil President Bolsonaro picks party for 2022 polls

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has been without a political party since 2019, will join the right-wing Liberal Party (PL), it said Wednesday, as Brazil gears up for presidential elections in 2022.

The far-right leader, who quit his previous party less than a year into his term, is required to join another to seek reelection in the October 2022 polls in Brazil, whose laws bar independent candidacies.

Having failed to gather the half-million signatures required to register his own party, Bolsonaro apparently decided on the PL, part of the so-called "centrao," a loose coalition of parties known for their knack for clinging to power and gaining access to government pork.

Bolsonaro "will sign his membership papers on November 22 in a Liberal Party event to be held in Brasilia," the party said in a statement, after its leader met with the president.

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Bolsonaro had said ahead of the meeting he was "99.9 percent" sure to join the PL, but did not officially announce a decision.

Bolsonaro, 66, has gone through eight parties in his more than three-decade political career.

He won the presidency in 2018 with the Social Liberal Party (PSL), but resigned in November 2019 after a power struggle with its leadership.

He then tried to launch his own party, dubbed the Alliance for Brazil, but fell short of the signatures and other requirements needed to register it.

Despite running in 2018 as a maverick outsider opposed to "old-school politics," Bolsonaro has since struck up an alliance with the "centrao," whose votes in Congress have helped him pass legislation and shielded him from the scores of impeachment petitions opponents have filed against him.

The PL "is the face of the 'centrao,'" said political scientist Andre Cesar of consulting firm Hold.

"The most important thing for that party is to be close to power," he told AFP.

Bolsonaro's popularity is at a low of 22 per cent, weighed down by his controversial downplaying of Covid-19 and the stalled economic recovery from the pandemic, which has claimed more than 600,000 lives in Brazil.

Opinion polls place Bolsonaro well behind his political nemesis, leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in next year's vote.

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