When this Thursday the president of Brazil accused the military and military police of “opening the doors” to the extremist Bolsonarists who assaulted the headquarters of the three powers on Sunday, he was speaking literally, not figuratively. “Many people from the Armed Forces conspired inside here. I am convinced that the door of the Planalto Palace [sede de la Presidencia] it was opened for them to enter because there is no broken door. That is to say, someone here made it easier for them to enter”, declared Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 77, during a breakfast with the local press. It was the most serious attack against Brazilian democracy in decades.
Until now, the president had not referred with such forcefulness to the collusion of uniformed officers in the invasion carried out by thousands of the most radical followers of the previous president, the far-right Jair Bolsonaro, 67. Lula has explained that he is waiting for “the dust to settle” to review all the recordings from the security cameras of the palace where he has his office, one of the three buildings fiercely attacked by the hordes that do not accept Lula’s victory based on to all kinds of conspiracy theories.
The indications of collusion and omission between the Military Police discovered in the hours following the assault were enough for the Supreme Court to remove from their posts the governor of the Federal District and the Secretary of Public Security, both allies of Bolsonaro. In addition, he ordered the imprisonment of the head of the Military Police of the DF.
The virulent attack has also focused on the man chosen by Lula to head the Defense Ministry, José Múcio, 74. He was a judge of the Court of Accounts, a minister with Lula and Bolsonaro also considered appointing him. He is a man of consensus, an articulator, as they say in Brazil. The president has tried to silence those who demand that he dismiss him: “If I have to dismiss each minister when he makes a mistake, we are going to have the highest labor turnover here in the history of Brazil. We all make mistakes. Zé Múcio will continue ”, he has settled.
The newly arrived Cabinet tries to resume normality at a forced march while judges deal with the more than 1,100 detainees sent to prison and different security forces investigate the attack. The Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, presents this afternoon a package of economic measures.
Indications of the clumsiness or complicity of some police and military commanders continue to emerge. On Sunday, despite the fact that it was known that the Bolsonaristas were marching towards the Plaza de los Tres Poderes and that the secret service had alerted other organizations to the risk of assault on public buildings, there were six sentinels and two guards in Planalto first thing in the morning. . Before the radicals landed, they were reinforced with 36 more uniformed officers, according to the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo. Very easily the radicals overcame the weak and poorly nourished police barriers.
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President Lula, who began his third term twelve days ago after the closest electoral victory in history, has made it clear that he distrusts many of the soldiers that Bolsonaro left stationed in all kinds of tasks in Planalto. And he has announced that he wants to carry out an exhaustive selection process to get rid of those who are the hard core of Bolsonarism. “It will not be a persecution”, he has stressed before saying that the Lava Jato fans will keep their posts. It is the operation against corruption in which he was sent to prison for some cases now cancelled.
The military are not new in the Brazilian Administration, but with Bolsonaro they achieved more power than ever. The ultra-rightist always had more uniformed, retired or active members in his Council of Ministers than women, and also at the lower levels he promoted a spectacular increase, so that the military numbered more than 6,000.
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