Just as his involvement in the gubernatorial race in Ceará began, Ciro Gomes has already started to implode the opposition. Perhaps the most accurate analogy is the Trojan Horse: Ciro functions as an involuntary agent who explodes the opposition from within, directly benefiting the very group he’s supposed to be fighting. Each controversial statement, each misogynistic attack, each act of self-sabotage strengthens the government of Elmano de Freitas and the group of former Governor Camilo Santana.
It’s almost as if Ciro is the PT’s infiltrator within the opposition. While the opposition needs to unite, he divides it. While it needs to build a respectable image, he associates it with violence against women. While it needs unifying leaders, he is the exact opposite: a ticking time bomb that implodes political movements wherever he goes.
The most recent episode of this self-destructive tendency took place at the 50th birthday party of Roberto Cláudio, former mayor of Fortaleza and a kind of Sancho Panza to Ciro Gomes. Roberto is a politician who has followed Ciro all these years, including during this latest period when the former governor launched furious attacks on the PT. Roberto even went so far as to support André Fernandes, the PL candidate for the Fortaleza mayor’s office in the last municipal elections—it’s worth noting that André Fernandes is a staunch, hardline Bolsonarista, and Roberto Cláudio’s support for him was considered a radical rupture in his career. At the party that was supposed to celebrate the birthday boy, Ciro gave his friend a “great gift”: he ruined his party, turning it into a party of misogynists.
The birthday was meant to be a strategic event to help Roberto Cláudio get back on his feet after years of turbulence. It was a party organized to bring together political friends for a process of rebuilding the former mayor’s career. The Ceará politician, who left the PDT to join União Brasil, made a radical ideological shift: from a historic ally of the left to a partner of the right-wing Bolsonaristas.
Roberto Cláudio is not a minor figure on the Ceará political chessboard. His name is already circulating as a possible candidate for the Ceará state government in 2026, as part of a potential opposition front against Elmano de Freitas’s government. This was precisely the projection the birthday was meant to solidify: a message of unity, renewal, and strength for the Ceará opposition.
But Ciro Gomes managed to completely overshadow Roberto Cláudio. The former governor and ex-minister, at nearly two meters tall, literally “overshadowed” his friend at his own birthday party. The physical contrast is almost a perfect metaphor, visible even in the images: Ciro, imposing and tall, dwarfing the 1.60m tall birthday boy at a party that was supposed to be his. Nobody talked about Roberto Cláudio anymore, or his career, or his potential candidacy. Instead of discreetly supporting the guest of honor, Ciro took the opportunity to suggest a possible gubernatorial candidacy of his own.
The Gratuitous Attack on Janaína Farias
But the worst was yet to come. Out of nowhere, without any provocation or justifying context, Ciro decided to attack former Senator Janaína Farias, now the mayor of Crateús. The attack was as disconnected from reality as it was incomprehensible from a strategic point of view. Janaína represents absolutely no threat to the Ceará opposition. She has no connection whatsoever with the current debate against Elmano de Freitas. Her figure is completely irrelevant to the political maneuvers Roberto and his allies are building.
The attack was not subtle or political. It was personal, low, and misogynistic. At Roberto Cláudio’s party, Ciro fired off: “All the education secretariats are parceled out by the man of the underpants, by the man of the underpants who also wants to be a senator for Ceará. What a surprise! The person who recruited poor, good-looking girls to do the dirty sexual service of Mr. Camilo Santana became a senator for Ceará. Now she is the mayor of a municipality in Ceará.”
Ciro didn’t name Janaína directly, but the reference to “the former senator and now mayor” made it obvious who he was talking about. A cowardly strategy that seeks the impact of the offense without fully taking responsibility for it.
Reactions to the new attacks were immediate and forceful. Janaína Farias released a statement of repudiation saying she had been “cowardly attacked by Mr. Ciro Gomes, a figure known for morally assaulting people and, especially, women.” The mayor of Crateús emphasized that Ciro “has already been convicted for attacks of this type” and classified him as “a misogynist who, increasingly, in the face of his political failure, seeks to attack people’s honor, in an irresponsible and reckless manner.”
The Minister of Education, Camilo Santana, also announced that he would sue Ciro for the statements. Santana’s team stated that the former governor “will have to be held accountable in court, as in other lawsuits.” Once again, Ciro managed to turn a political event into a source of legal action and embarrassment for his allies.
The backlash on social media was devastating. The case became a national headline, associating Roberto Cláudio and the entire Ceará opposition with violence against women. An event that should have generated positive headlines about the renewal of the opposition turned into negative news across the country’s press.
This is not the first time Ciro has spewed his venom against Janaína Farias. In April 2024, during an interview on the show Jornal Jangadeiro, he had already crossed all lines of decorum and basic civility. On that occasion, he called the senator a “courtesan”—a word that, according to the dictionary, means “a prostitute who serves clients from economically high classes.”
His exact words were even more explicit and degrading: “She is simply the person who organized Camilo Santana’s orgies. What do I have to do with Santana’s private life? Nothing. And with hers? Nothing. But to put her in the Senate. The voice of Ceará in the Senate, the women of Ceará are represented by a courtesan.” He continued: “He took her out of the way to get her to a place that belonged to Virgílio Távora, Tasso Jereissati, Patrícia Saboya.”
The legal consequences were swift. In May 2025, Judge Priscila Faria da Silva, of the 12th Civil Court of Brasília, ordered Ciro to pay R$ 52,000 in moral damages to Janaína Farias. The amount was calculated at R$ 13,000 for each of the four interviews in which he made the misogynistic attacks.
The reasoning of the sentence is devastating. The magistrate considered that the statements “went beyond the limits of political criticism” and constituted “personal attacks with a misogynistic character.” The decision also highlighted that there was “abuse of freedom of expression” and that the statements contained “adjectives and remarks that even allude to the promotion of prostitution.”
In other words, Ciro not only behaved like a low-class politician, but he was formally convicted for it. The court recognized what any minimally civilized person already knew: that the attacks were unacceptable and constituted violence against women. Even so, at Roberto’s birthday party, he returned to the charge.
National Repudiation from Female Senators
The national dimension that the 2024 attacks reached was impressive. All 15 female senators of the Republic, regardless of party or position, signed a motion of repudiation against Ciro at the time. It was a historic union that included everyone from PT members to staunch opponents like Damares Alves and Tereza Cristina. When you manage to unite Damares and a PT senator against you, it’s a sign that you have truly crossed all lines.
The official document classifies the statements as “gender-based political violence” and “prejudiced, misogynistic, and aggressive declarations.” The senators denounced what they called an “unacceptable regression to women’s achievements” and an “attitude of devaluing” that represents “resistance to female participation in positions of power.”
The Senate’s Special Women’s Prosecutor’s Office also issued an official note of repudiation, classifying the statements as “one of the most grotesque faces of violence against women” and expressing institutional solidarity with Janaína.
When the entire Federal Senate mobilizes against you, when all female senators of the Republic, from all parties, unite to repudiate your conduct, it’s because you have truly managed the feat of becoming a national pariah.
The reactions to the new attacks were immediate and forceful. Janaína Farias released a statement of repudiation saying she had been “cowardly attacked by Mr. Ciro Gomes, a figure known for morally assaulting people and, especially, women.” The mayor of Crateús emphasized that Ciro “has already been convicted for attacks of this type” and classified him as “a misogynist who, increasingly, in the face of his political failure, seeks to attack people’s honor, in an irresponsible and reckless manner.”
The Minister of Education, Camilo Santana, also announced that he would sue Ciro for the statements. Santana’s team stated that the former governor “will have to be held accountable in court, as in other lawsuits.” Once again, Ciro managed to turn a political event into a source of legal action and embarrassment for his allies.
The backlash on social media was devastating. The case became a national headline, associating Roberto Cláudio and the entire Ceará opposition with violence against women. An event that should have generated positive headlines about the renewal of the opposition turned into negative news across the country’s press.
The damage was immediate and devastating. Roberto, who was trying to rebuild his image, found himself associated with violence against women. The opposition as a whole was stained by Ciro’s presence and statements. It’s the kind of self-sabotage that only Ciro can promote with such efficiency. He not only shoots himself in the foot, but he manages to hit the feet of everyone around him.
The most incomprehensible thing in this whole story is Ciro’s complete lack of strategic sense. He seems not to understand that the Ceará opposition is “totally Bolsonarista,” as those who follow local politics have rightly observed. Instead of trying to find his place in this context, he makes mistakes that split the very opposition he should be uniting.
The result is predictable: if he continues at this pace, the opposition to the Elmano de Freitas government will get “3% in the 2026 elections”—coincidentally, the same percentage Ciro obtained in the last presidential elections. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, considering he seems determined to turn every opposition event into a source of embarrassment and division.
Every public appearance he makes is a shot in the opposition’s foot. Every statement is a gift to those who govern Ceará. Every event he participates in becomes a source of embarrassment for his supposed allies. Ciro has managed the feat of becoming his opponent’s best campaigner. And the most impressive thing is that he does it for free, purely out of a vocation for self-destruction. Just ask Roberto: he wanted to throw a party to promote himself and ended up being a supporting actor in the horror show of the person who was supposed to be his partner.
The Anti-Vote Activism
There is an additional destructive factor: the activism that Ciro has cultivated over the years. This activism is much smaller today than it once was, partly because only the most furious are left, a handful of depoliticized individuals whose schizophrenic strategy is to impose a national development project via Bolsonarism. It’s an absurd contradiction, since Bolsonarism is the exact opposite of any structured national project.
This activism is characterized only by hatred. They no longer engage in politics; they live in a sphere completely detached from reality. It is a hatred, above all, for the PT and the left itself. For them, any left-wing economist who supports the Lula government is because they have “sold out.” For them, the Lula government is “neoliberal”—revealing the schizophrenic side of those who accept an alliance with Bolsonarism but adopt a Bolshevik and communist posture.
The political violence and truculence that have become Ciro’s hallmark are now also their hallmark. On social media, they only operate through insults and online lynch mobs. They have forgotten that to carry out any political project, you need to bring people together, have a party, and a movement that adds strength. They have become sectarian, losing any commitment to the real construction of a political movement.
Bolsonaristas suffer from various problems of cognitive dissonance, but at least they have a mass following and are dangerous. Ciro’s followers are not dangerous—they are just melancholic. But they become a negative element because they feed hatred on social media. Ciro’s videos are only shared by the far right, not by those who would vote for him, but by those who consider him a useful clown.
The ironic side is that this very negative activism pushes away votes. Just as Ciro has become radioactive and takes away votes from anyone who gets close to him, the Ciro activist base also drives away those who should support him. It surrounds his ideas with so much truculence that it makes nothing attractive. It has become an anti-vote activism, in line with Ciro’s own characteristics.
