Brazil’s Bolsonaro ‘stable’ after being hospitalised with abdominal pain

The 70-year-old former leader is seeking to make a political comeback in 2026 even as he faces a criminal trial.

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former far-right president, has been declared stable and without symptoms but remains in hospital, after complaining of abdominal pain, forcing him to break off a regional tour in northeast Brazil aimed at drumming up political support.

The latest health complication on Friday comes six years after Bolsonaro was stabbed in the stomach just weeks before the 2018 presidential elections, which he later won.

The 70-year-old, who is seeking to make a political comeback even as he faces a criminal trial, started feeling “unbearable abdominal pain” at a political event in the northeastern state of Rio Grande do Norte, a senior member of his Liberal Party said.

In July 2023, a Brazilian court barred Bolsonaro from holding public office until 2030 after convicting him of abuse of power in his push to cast doubt on the South American country’s electronic voting system. Bolsonaro, who served as president from 2019 to 2022, lost to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

He has been hoping the ban will be overturned to give him a shot at a return to power in the style of his idol, United States President Donald Trump.

But those plans were dimmed last month when Bolsonaro was ordered by the Supreme Court in March to stand trial on charges of plotting a coup against Lula.

If convicted, the former army captain risks a jail term of more than 40 years, and political banishment.

Dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics”, Bolsonaro has been the target of multiple investigations since his turbulent years as leader of Latin America’s biggest economy.

Bolsonaro, who is hoping to make a comeback in the 2026 presidential elections, was set to start a political tour of Rio Grande do Norte on Friday.

He was brought to a hospital where he was “stabilised”, according to right-wing senator Rogerio Marinho, then flown by helicopter to a bigger facility in the state capital, Natal.

Bolsonaro “remains under observation and will spend the night in hospital”, Luiz Roberto Fonseca, medical director of the Rio Grande hospital, told a news conference late on Friday.

Surgeon Helio Barreto added that “for the moment, no surgery is planned,” adding that the ex-president had seen “improvement” with “decreased pain”.

Television footage had earlier shown Bolsonaro walking to the helicopter, with evident discomfort.

“Thank God, my condition is stable and I am recovering, without fever. The clinical progress is good,” Bolsonaro wrote on social network X on Friday.

His message was accompanied by a photo of him in a hospital bed giving a thumbs-up, with a tube up his nose and electrodes on his bare chest.

“The cause was a complication in the small intestine, a consequence of the multiple surgeries I needed to undergo after the attack in 2018,” he added.

The former president has undergone at least four surgeries since his stabbing, including the placement and subsequent removal of a colostomy bag, which made him prone to intestinal disorders.