Brazil’s surfer prince urges return to monarchy

He surfs, dances in carnivals and can sound more revolutionary than royal, but Prince Dom Joao de Orleans e Braganca is serious about restoring the monarchy to save Brazil.

As Latin America’s biggest country sinks under a tsunami of corruption, recession and political instability, Dom Joao told AFP that the royals — who were last in charge 126 years ago — could be part of a “radical” solution.

The prince, great-great-grandson of the tragic final monarch, Emperor Pedro II, said Brazil should switch from a republic to a constitutional monarchy, along the lines of Britain or Sweden, where Queen Elizabeth II and King Carl XVI Gustaf are essentially figureheads.

With a greying, trimmed beard, a neatly buttoned shirt, tan slacks and boat shoes worn without socks, the 62-year-old real estate developer and keen photographer said there would be no need for ornate palaces and long titles.

Brazil’s modern emperor would be modelled on the modest, so-called bicycle monarchs of Scandinavia, he said — even if as a lifelong beach lover, he’d more likely be dubbed the surfer king.

“There’s an idea that the monarchy is pompous and I don’t disagree, but if you look at the modern ones, especially the Scandi-navians, they are very simple heads of state,” he said. Dom Joao claims that royals would mean the return of an almost extinct type of public figure in today’s Brazil, where President Dilma Rousseff is in the throes of impeachment proceedings over her alleged fiddling of the national budget, while Congress is reeling from corruption scandals.

“As royals, the one difference is that we have been raised to have. A sense of serving the country without wanting anything back,” Dom Joao said.