At 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 13, while 20,000 security agents were protecting Rio de Janeiro for the leadership of G20 presidents, a man committed self-immolation at the doors of the Supreme Federal Court (STF) of Brasilia. Francisco Wanderley Luiz, 59, a member of Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party (PL), became the first “bomb man” of the Brazilian extreme right.
Characterized as the Joker, movie protagonist hollywood by Todd Philips, Wanderley died when the bomb he was carrying in his own body exploded. A few minutes before, he tried to invade the headquarters of the Supreme Court, detonated his car parked in the Congress of Deputies and threw a cloth soaked with gasoline on the statue called Justice, which he planned to set on fire with a fire extinguisher full of fuel.
An hour after the death of “Joker Wanderley,” a man tried to enter Granja do Torto, one of the official residences of the president of Brazil. A member of the Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI) had to fire a shot to deter the invasion.
The euphoria that Donald Trump’s victory in the US elections brought to the Bolsonarism It disappeared in just two hours. The incidents in Brasilia on the 13th caused a political turning point. And they accelerated the dissemination of inquiring about the blowthe investigation that the Federal Police (PF) has been carrying out for two years into the attempted coup d’état that led to the antidemocratic day of January 8, 2023 in Brasilia.
After Trump’s victory, Jair Bolsonaro fully trusted the approval of Congressional Bill 2,858, a package of amnesty laws that, among other things, would reverse the political disqualification that prevents him from being a candidate. “What happens in the United States ends up happening here,” said Jair Bolsonaro in an interview Folha de São Paulo one day after the US elections.
The attempted attack by the “Joker of Brasilia”, a far-right man who had threatened Lula and Alexandre de Moraes (Minister of the Supreme Court), a supporter of QAnon conspiracy ideas and convicted anti-communistfroze optimism Bolsonarist. The real bombshell arrived on the morning of Tuesday, November 19. As the G20 presidents prepared for the closing session, the Federal Police (PF) made public “operation Countercoup,” which revealed a plan to assassinate Lula, Geraldo Alckmin (current vice president of Brazil) and Alexandre de Moraes at the end 2022. Four soldiers and a federal police officer were arrested.
As the content of the plan to assassinate Lula with poison was revealed, panic took over the Bolsonaro clan. The police investigation placed Walter Braga Netto, Minister of Defense during the Bolsonaro government and candidate for vice president in 2022, at the epicenter of the criminal plot.
General and black kids
“Operation Countercoup” collects evidence of Jair Bolsonaro’s direct participation in the attempted coup d’état and the assassination of Lula. General Mário Fernandes, then number two of the General Secretariat of the Presidency, confirmed, according to the report, that Jair Bolsonaro authorized everything. The so-called Green and Yellow Puñal plan was printed in the Planalto palace (seat of the presidency) and taken to a meeting at the Alvorada Palace (official residence of the president), in which Bolsonaro was present.
The coup d’état and attempted assassination of Lula began to be plotted, according to the police, at a meeting at Walter Braga Netto’s house. The general would have assumed the coordination of the black kids (members of the special operations corps) who would try to liquidate Lula, Alckmin and Moraes. In addition, Netto would have suggested that the expenses of the operation could come from the Liberal Party’s coffers. The research reveals that the kids red They possessed “war weapons used by combat groups” and privileged details about the agenda of its objectives.
Alexandre de Moraes was the target that came closest to dying: he came to be in the crosshairs of a sniper who decided to abort the operation due to a last-minute change of plans. What is missing for Jair Bolsonaro and General Braga Netto to be arrested?Ricardo Noblat, one of Brazil’s most prestigious political analysts, wrote on Tuesday.
Bolsonaro prison
After two days of confusion on the extreme right, the Federal Police launched the final fireworks on Thursday afternoon: it handed over to the Supreme Court the question about the blowblaming Jair Bolsonaro and 36 other people for “attempt to violently abolish the democratic rule of law, coup d’état and criminal organization.” On the list of accused are generals Braga Netto and Augusto Heleno (former minister of the Institutional Security Cabinet), as well as Alexandre Ramagem, former director of the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin). The Supreme Court will deliver the report to the Prosecutor’s Office, responsible for executing the complaint, expectedly at the beginning of 2025. Jair Bolsonaro could face a sentence of 30 years in prison and political disqualification.
“Operation Backlash” puts Jair Bolsonaro on the ropes. The former president was already strongly compromised due to his multiple ties to the antidemocratic events of January 8, 2023 and the appearance of the minutes of the coupa draft decree that authorized a coup d’état.
However, the Federal Police has escalated Bolsonaro’s involvement in recent days, revealing the existence of a criminal organization that acted to try to carry out a coup d’état, attack institutions, illegally sell state jewelry, defraud vaccination certification, spy political adversaries and assassinate their opponents.
“The events leave Bolsonaro very touched. It practically ends the possibility of being amnestied and of re-contesting the in-person elections of 2026 and of there being a change in the legal decision in that sense,” says Sérgio Praça, professor at the School of Social Sciences of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation. in interview with elDiario.es.
The amnesty bill is almost buried. “It makes no sense to talk about amnesty for those convicted of the coup attack of January 8, 2023 given the current situation,” said Gilmar Mendes, minister of the STF, on Thursday. The Workers’ Party (PT) has taken advantage of the situation to ask Artur Lira, president of the Congressional board, to put the amnesty bill on hold indefinitely.
Political leadership on the decline
After the brief parenthesis of the Trump effect, Bolsonaro’s political leadership is seriously compromised. The hectic Brazilian week has reinforced the loneliness of the former president. Brazil’s conservative bosses are beginning to abandon it to its fate.
“His apex was in 2018, when he was elected. From then on he only declined, because he did not know how to lead the country,” a conservative leader told the journalist. Raquel Landim. As if that were not enough, the inclusion in the list of accused of Valdemar de Costa Netro, president of the Liberal Party (PL), hits the mark of the main opposition party.
The October municipal elections, well below the PL’s expectations, had already led to the emergence of new ultra alternatives. On the one hand, the coach radical Pablo Marçal appears very well positioned in the presidential polls. On the other hand, União Brasil, a powerful conservative party, has already announced that it will have its own candidate. The unfoldings of question about the blow They could cause, in the words of Sérgio Praça, a distancing of Bolsonaro’s party from the extreme right: “In the PL there are not only extremists. There are more sensible people, less prone to dictatorships and coups d’état. With the accusation of Valdemar Costa Neto, which weakens the PL, the party will end up migrating towards the center.”
For President Lula, who has lost popularity so far this year, the coup plot is a lifeline. “I have to be grateful now because I am alive. The attempt to poison me and Alckmin did not work. “Here we are,” he said this Thursday from the Planalto palace. Victimhood has changed sides. If until now it was Jair Bolsonaro who used the attack suffered during the 2002 electoral campaign as a wild card to reinforce his image, Lula is already surfing the wave of the assassination attempt. “I don’t want to poison anyone. The only thing I want is that when my term ends we demoralize, with numbers, those who govern before us,” Lula added.
The Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) has already asked the Supreme Court preventive detention of Jair Bolsonaro, something unlikely according to most analysts. “Bolsonaro is not going to stop being a popular leader. Many of his followers will see these events as a plot by the Supreme Court, the PT, the media, in short, conspiracy theories,” says Sérgio Praça. The Supreme Court will hardly order the preventive detention of the former president, since it could cause an angry crowd to rise up and take the same radical course as the “Joker of Brasilia”, the man-bomb who accelerated the siege of Jair Bolsonaro.
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