Brazil’s ex-president Jair Bolsonaro said Saturday he will “probably” need surgery, after being hospitalized a day earlier in the northeastern city of Natal with what he called “unbearable” abdominal pain.
The far-right former leader said on X that he would “probably be operated on again” for the latest complication stemming from a 2018 attack during which he was stabbed in the stomach.
Doctors told him it was “the most serious” incident since that attack, he said, describing it earlier as “a complication in the small intestine, a consequence of the multiple surgeries I needed to undergo after the attack in 2018.”
“After experiencing so many similar episodes in the last few years I’ve grown used to the pain,” he said. “But this time, even the doctors were surprised.”
He arrived by plane in Brasilia late Saturday, and a spokeswoman for the DF Star private clinic told AFP the 70-year-old had been admitted on Saturday evening.
“His health is stable, he is feeling less pain. Tests have been carried out and the results will be fundamental to deciding in the coming hours” whether surgery will be necessary, doctor Leandro Echenique told a press briefing in Brasilia.
Bolsonaro was earlier flown aboard a medical plane out of Natal, where he had been brought to hospital Friday with what he called “unbearable” abdominal pain that forced him to interrupt a multi-city tour.
He went to greet several dozen supporters wearing the Brazil football team’s yellow-and-green colors as he walked out of Natal’s Rio Grande hospital to a waiting ambulance.
“Courage, Bolsonaro,” the crowd shouted.
An AFP videojournalist saw that he was still fitted with a nasogastric tube.
‘Unbearable pain’
Bolsonaro had been on a multi-city tour in Rio Grande do Norte state when the trip when he fell ill.
Bolsonaro lost some 40 percent of his blood in the 2018 attack. The assailant was later declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
The former army captain was elected president just weeks after the attack but the stabbing has taken a lasting toll, leading to repeated hospitalizations and surgeries.
Bolsonaro has been declared ineligible to run for office until 2030 for baselessly questioning the reliability of Brazil’s electronic voting system.
But he has clung to hopes that the judgment might be overturned or the sentence reduced in time to allow him to stand in next year’s elections.
The latest medical incident came two weeks after Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled that Bolsonaro should face trial on charges of plotting a coup after he lost the presidency to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the 2022 election.
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.
