Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva has waged an internal battle to restore confidence in the democratic system after the January 8 coup attempt. The recent purges in the Army and public media have the purpose of ending the inheritance of government officials from his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, whom ‘Lula’ points out as the mastermind of the assault.
More than a week after the assault on the three branches of state in Brazil, newly inaugurated President Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva continues to take action against those who participated in the assault and also those who might be complicit.
The security of the Planalto Palace, headquarters of the Executive in Brazil, has been shaken by ‘Lula’. In two days, January 17 and 18, the president fired 53 soldiers around him. 13 of them were assigned to the Institutional Security Cabinet of the presidential palace, while the other 40 soldiers were removed from their duties at the presidential residence, the Alvorada Palace.
‘Lula’ had already expressed last week his distrust of the personnel inherited from the administration of his predecessor and staunch rival of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, who is being officially investigated by the highest court in Brazil for allegedly being the mastermind of the assault on the own Supreme Court, Congress, and the Presidential Palace. The leftist president then ordered a “deep review.”
“Someone suspected of being a radical Bolsonaro cannot remain in here,” said ‘Lula’ at a breakfast with journalists. “How can I have a person outside my office who can shoot me?”
For ‘Lula’ there was internal complicity in what he describes as the “beginning of a coup”. “What happened here was an attempted coup by prepared people,” the president said in his first televised interview as acting president, on Wednesday, January 18.
‘Lula’, who days before the interview dismissed by decree the leadership of all the Brazilian public media as a result of their treatment of the January 8 assault, took advantage of the space on national television to harden the tone against Bolsonaro. She held him directly responsible for the radicalization of his followers. “I don’t know if the former president ordered it (the assault), but what I know is that he is to blame because he spent four years inciting hatred,” Lula said.
The president went further and raised the possibility that Bolsonaro had organized the “taking of Brasilia” in order to return to the country. The former president has been in the state of Florida in the United States since last December 30 after delegitimizing the victory of ‘Lula’ in the presidential elections of October 2022.
Progress of the judicial investigation
The numbers of the investigation by the Federal Supreme Court of Brazil and the authorities are astronomical. At least 1,800 people who participated in the assault in Brasilia were arrested and 1,459 hearings have already been held.
Of the thousands of detainees, a third part was released for “humanitarian reasons” and can respond in freedom for the process. However, the magistrate of the highest court, Alexandre de Moraes, reported that 354 of the radicals arrested in flagrante delicto on January 8 were placed in preventive detention, a precautionary measure that does not stipulate a term for a sentence.
The 354 people involved are accused of various crimes that “put public order at risk,” according to the authorities. They are accused of “acts of terrorism” and “destruction of public property”; “criminal association” and “threat, persecution and incitement to crime”; “violent abolition of the democratic rule of law” and “coup d’état”.
Case of Anderson Torres, former Secretary of Security of Brasilia
As for the hearings, the former Bolsonaro Justice Minister and also Federal District Security Secretary at the time of the coup, Anderson Torres, appeared at his first hearing and remained silent. Torres was detained on Saturday, January 14, at the Brasilia international airport after his return from Florida, where Bolsonaro is also present.
The former minister is being investigated as an alleged accomplice in the coup in Brasilia and for his negligence as the person in charge of the security of the Brazilian capital. On January 8, Torres was already in the United States.
In addition, the former Bolsonaro official is also being investigated by the Superior Electoral Tribunal (TSE) after a Federal Police search of his residence found a decree in which former President Bolsonaro allegedly planned to establish a state of defense, while he was still in office, against the TSE in order to annul the victory of ‘Lula’ da Silva.
The state of defense is provided for in article 136 of the Constitution. This mechanism allows the president to intervene in “restricted and determined places” to “preserve or promptly restore public order or social peace threatened by serious and imminent institutional instability or affected by calamities of great magnitude in nature.”
However, according to the former president’s lawyers, the defense state decree “was not published or publicized, except by the investigative bodies” and “it was only carried out on paper, not in reality.”
“Intelligence Mistake”
“We made a basic mistake: my intelligence services did not exist that day,” ‘Lula’ da Silva confessed on television, referring to the inability of the security forces to prevent the assault in Brasilia. intelligence, the national intelligence service; none of them warned me,” added ‘Lula’.
The president was not in Brasilia on January 8, the day of the assault. ‘Lula’ was in the southern state of Sao Paulo attending to the environmental emergency caused by the heavy rains.
Likewise, the three-time president-elect urged the public forces not to take sides in politics because he is sure that members of the army and the police were lax with the radical protesters who besieged the headquarters of the three powers.
“Whoever wants to get into politics must take off his uniform, leave his post and then go into politics,” said ‘Lula’.
With Reuters, AFP, EFE and local media