Aécio gives up running for President, and PSDB will be left without a candidate for the Planalto

He made the statements in an interview with the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo published on Wednesday (8). The information was also confirmed to Folha.

As Folha showed, the PSDB considered launching Aécio for the Presidency after the candidacy of senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ) was undermined by the revelation of conversations with former banker Daniel Vorcaro, from Banco Master, in which he asked for money for a film about his father.

The 2014 dispute was Aécio's last moment of great political prominence, when he finished the second round with 48.36% of the votes, against 51.64% for Dilma Rousseff (PT), who was re-elected. He was later targeted by allegations of developments in Operation Lava Jato, along with the main leaders of his party, which began to decline since then.

In the interview, Aécio also said that his party should not support Flávio or current president Lula (PT) in a possible second round, remaining neutral. The deputy stated that "we are about to witness the most fratricidal election in Brazil's recent history."

"Whoever wins the elections, unfortunately, we will have to prepare for another four years of a country divided in half, because this division interests both extremes, they feed on it", he declared.

Aécio Neves stated that he has not yet decided on a candidacy for the Senate, where he had a mandate from 2011 to 2019. He said that it is a "possibility", but that his priority currently is "building a party for Brazil and handing this over to a new generation".

"I haven't made a decision. My mantra is that politics is the art of managing time. I'm talking a lot in Minas, going there this week and again there are some possibilities."

In the most recent Datafolha survey, released three weeks ago, the toucan scored just 2% of voting intentions. Lula had 41%, and Flávio Bolsonaro, 31%. Aécio stood out in a negative way: he had one of the highest rejection rates in the survey, with 23%.

The PSDB launched candidates in all presidential contests from 1989 to 2018. It won two of them, in 1994 and 1998, with Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and reached the second round against PT members four times, from 2002 to 2014.

Subsequently, it lost political space with the rise of Bolsonarism, which assumed the status of the PT's main rival. In the 2022 election, for the first time the tucanos signed an alliance to support another candidate in the first round, with Simone Tebet, then in the MDB. Also that year, they lost the state election in São Paulo, after a sequence of seven victories.

In May, in an interview with the program Frente a Frente, from Folha and UOL, Aécio had already indicated that there were many obstacles to the party's eventual candidacy. "If you ask me if this project is viable, I have many doubts."

The PSDB also considered launching former minister Ciro Gomes as President, but he preferred to run for the Government of Ceará for the party.

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