Bolsonaro’s passive post-election strategy is good news for Lula

In the first weeks after his electoral defeat, Jair Bolsonaro’s silence seemed to be a carefully crafted compromise between not wanting to disappoint his more radical followers — who demanded a military coup — and avoiding punishment from Brazil’s electoral court, which had signaled that Mr. Bolsonaro could lose his political rights if he explicitly questioned the result of the presidential elections on October 30, 2022.

Yet now that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is president, Mr. Bolsonaro’s post-election strategy increasingly strikes observers as confusing and counterproductive. 

In pro-Bolsonaro groups, the president’s aloof stance has generated anger and disappointment. The outgoing president’s lukewarm December 30 farewell speech (broadcast on social media) did not go down well among many of his fans. 

Pro-Bolsonaro profiles which usually preach to the converted had to go out of their way to depict the president’s cryptic admission that he failed (“A battle was lost, but we will win the war”) as strategic and far-sighted. In the same way, numerous followers condemned his subsequent decision to travel to the Orlando area in Florida and stay away from Lula’s inauguration on January 1.

One recalled Mr. Bolsonaro’s notorious campaign phrase that the only three options for him were “victory, prison or death,” adding sarcastically that apparently there was a fourth option: “Fleeing to the U.S. like a coward.”

All that is rather surprising given the former president’s shrewd communication skills and the fact that the former Army captain received more votes than any defeated...