As he greeted supporters on Thursday, Brazilian presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro suffered an assassination attempt. Video posted online shows an attacker stabbing Bolsonaro in the stomach. The candidate is now in a stable condition in hospital.
But the video appears to indicate that Bolsonaro was without a security detail from the Brazilian federal police. While that might be Bolsonaro’s choice — allowing him to get closer to supporters and attract positive campaign imagery of thronging crowds — Thursday’s incident proves it’s a risky one. Without clear separation between his body and his supporters, Bolsonaro made himself vulnerable to exactly this kind of attack — a prospective assassin hiding in the crowd and then surging forward before he could be identified and stopped.
Sitting elevated above the crowd, Bolsonaro would also have made an easy target for a gunman. As the CNN video below shows, these factors explain why the U.S. Secret Service always attempts to keep a bubble of distance and protection between its protectees and crowds.
Yet as a former military officer who is pledging to aggressively crush powerful corrupt interests and criminal gangs, Bolsonaro faces a diverse array of significant threats. Moreover, assassinations and targeted killings have long been a challenge in Brazilian civil society. All of this should have led Bolsonaro, who is frontrunner to win the presidency in October, to request a protective detail from the federal police or at the very least to hire professional protection officers.
That said, beyond Bolsonaro not having been seriously injured in this incident, there is one tiny benefit to what has happened. It might offer a wake-up call to Mexico’s president-elect and other leaders as to why they need to take their security seriously. Fortunately, the U.S. Secret Service remains the world’s finest protective agency.
