The Brazilian President, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has returned to the headquarters of the Executive Power after the assault on the Planalto Palace perpetrated by followers of Jair Bolsonaro. Determined to reverse the coup tide, in a gesture of strong symbolic weight, he went on foot this Monday night to the Supreme Federal Court (STF) in the center of Brasilia. In his march through the central square of the capital, he was accompanied by the head of the STF, Rose Weberthe vice president Geraldo Alckminsome governors, senators and representatives.
This kind of civic march began after a meeting with the governors to discuss the crisis caused by the invasions of the palaces of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. The president has referred to the events of last Sunday, indicating that he is going “to investigate” who were manipulated and who were the masterminds who were not present at the Planalto Palace to carry out the shots and generate a climate of institutional rupture. “What were they demanding, a salary increase? No, they were demanding a coup.”
The president added that “there was a police coexistence supporting the protesters, while the soldiers talked to the people as if they were their allies.
The early arrival at the Planalto
Early, at nine in the morning this Monday, the brand new head of state arrived at the Planalto, seat of the Government, where almost nothing has been left standing. The far-right mob had vented its anti-democratic anger the day before, destroying everything in its path, from furniture and computers to paint the mulatas of one of the fathers of national modernism, the immortal Di Cavalcanti. The 1962 work, valued at 1.4 million euros, has been destroyed by invaders.
Why such cruelty with that pictorial jewel? Perhaps because it portrays some Afro-descendant girls, frowned upon by this racist right and vindicated by the new government responsible for recreating the Ministry of Racial Inclusion, in charge of the young black woman. anielle franco. Perhaps because Di Cavalcanti was a member of the communist party.
On his return to the Planalto, a Lula in a gray suit and dark shirt without a tie watches dozens of employees pick up glass, stack furniture, take it out in containers and clean up feces left by that group of fascists as eschatological as they are politically illiterate.
One of the few offices safe from the plague has been the presidential office, on the third floor, where the president of the workers party (PT) and its vice-president Geraldo Alckminof Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB) sat next to each other. They were accompanied by the head of Congress, Senator Veneziano Vital do Regothe head of deputies, Arthur Lira and the president of the STF, judge Rose Weber.
The Brazilian government is united
“We are united so that the institutional measures are taken, we urge society to maintain serenity in defense of peace and democracy, the country needs normalcy,” says a document signed by Lula, Vital do Rego, Lira and Weber . “The powers of the Republic, defenders of the Constitutional Charterreject the terrorist acts, vandalism, criminal and coup actions that occurred yesterday afternoon in Brasilia”, explains the signed text.
That the first document of the representatives of the powers of the republic choose the word “terrorists” to refer to the horde of militants who have depredated the institutions says a lot about the seriousness of the coup attempt. A plan about which Bolsonaro began to speak and agitate two years ago, in January 2021, when the US president of the moment, donald trump, persuaded his people to storm the Capitol in Washington. The Oligarch’s Adventure Republican Party it was shipwrecked, in part, because it lacked the support of the Armed forces.
Contrary to the United States, in Brazil the Armed Forces joined Bolsonarismo and agreed with the plan to destabilize Lula. Thats why he Army Headquarters It was ceded as a hideout where 2,000 extremists set up a camp from where they launched urban terrorism operations, the last one last Sunday.
As the investigations progress, it is noted how the military used the protesters to generate chaos and install ungovernability. With the capital’s palaces on fire and the police bolsonarista still, Lula would be forced to decree military intervention in internal security. That is to say: abdicate before the military corporation a week after assuming the Government.
The plan failed because the president, instead of asking the military to go out and patrol the streets, chose to intervene in the Government of Brasilia and take control of its police to return to “normality”, as the document presented this Monday says.
Camp in front of the General Headquarters
The intense presidential agenda of this Monday has sought to broaden the political alliances that allow isolating the concentrated nucleus of the coup formed by Bolsonaro, the military and the activists zombie. After speaking with the heads of the Legislative and Judicial branches in the morning, in the evening Lula met with the governors to agree on common measures against the rebels.
While the meetings were taking place in the Planalto in reconstruction phase, Lula has sent a couple of ministers to the Army Headquarters to agree on the evacuation of the right-wing revolutionaries. At first, the generals objected, but as the hours passed and the pressure of public opinion, they were forced to consent to the departure of 1,200 campers and their transfer to a Federal Police headquarters to be interrogated.
Two ministers emerge victorious
With this pressure on the military leadership bolsonarista, the Government has won a transitory and important victory. The political revenue is for the president and his Minister of Justice, flavio dinosupporter of doing justice to the material and intellectual authors of the acts “terrorists“. If Dino’s thesis advances, the investigations could reveal the names of the businessmen who financed the uprising on Sunday. And not only that: they will also shed light on the probable complicity of the military and the almost certain responsibility of Bolsonaro from the United Stateswhere some Democratic deputies asked the Government of Joe Biden to expel it
The triumph of the Minister of Justice, Flavio Dino, with the expulsion of the militants encamped in front of the Army, has been a defeat for the appeasing Minister of Defense, Jose Muciowhich has proposed a reconciled solution with the military that includes tolerance of the mutinous groups that it does not treat as coup plotters but rather protesters with rights to express their ideas. The head of Defense points towards an amnesty, which would also cover Bolsonaro. That project has lost a battle with Lula walking towards the STF and Dino becoming strong in the search for justice.
