After the stormy final phase of Rousseff’s presidency, Brazil has inaugurated a new political phase that is apparently divergent from the previous one. The election of Jair Bolsonaro to the Presidency of Brazil on 28th October 2018 not only threatens to alter deeply the political and social balance in contemporary Brazil, but it could also jeopardize irreversibly the democratic institutions of the country. The article aims at outlining Bolsonaro’s character from his first steps on the political stage to the presidential election. The basis for this investigation is provided by an analysis of the basic statements in his political programme, of the conflicts and the cultural involution that his presidency is provoking in Brazilian society, and of the powers and competences that belong to the President within the Brazilian constitutional order.
