Brazil: March and threat of coup d’état at the Supreme Court | The demonstration of support for Bolsonaro did not reach the expected figures

From Brasilia

In Brazil, there is less democracy. Tens of thousands of supporters of the far right mobilized on Tuesday, Independence Day, to attend the coup events called by Jair Bolsonaro in Brasilia and São Paulo. These were important mobilizations although far from summoning up to two million people promised by the sovereign.

“We cannot accept more political pressure in our Brazil, or the head of this (judicial) branch does not fit his or this branch may suffer what we do not want”, threatened the captain president. He was addressing the head of the Supreme, Luiz Fux, demanding that he lock up the rebel judges, that is to say independent.

The Workers’ Party, social movements, unions and the Catholic Church carried out mobilizations for the dismissal of Bolsonaro and for the defense of democracy in São Paulo, Brasilia and 160 other cities (see separate note).

Military party

At half past ten in the morning, boarded a truck with speakers, Bolsonaro gave a brief speech intended primarily to intimidate the Federal Supreme Court. In the same truck was the general Walter Souza Braga Netto, Minister of Defense, located within the most Bolsonarist wing of a military party loyal to the government and to the authoritarian regime, even if it would be crossed by some internal differences like that expressed by the vice-president, Hamilton Mourao.

General Mourao expresses the same neo-fascist convictions as the Head of State, whose sober style differentiates him and his dialogue with economic and political groups disappointed by the Head of State obsessed with the generation of crises after another, and the attack on the Powers of the Republic.

From the plain, on Avenue Explanada de los Ministerios, thousands of pillars of government demanded an end to the “toga dictatorship”, by closing the Supreme Court and / or invading the courthouse located about three hundred meters from where the deed was performed. By mid-morning, the temperature in Brasilia had risen to 30 degrees Celsius with a typical Sahara desert humidity of 13%.

Dry oven

In this dry open-air furnace, the blows of the speaker against justice, but above all against democracy, seemed more hurtful. The public protected themselves with white umbrellas or Brazilian flags from the aggressive sun, but not enough to appease the euphoria expressed by the cries of “myth, myth”. A good number of people aged 50 and over have been observed, mostly from other provinces such as Goias and Mato Grosso do Sul, whose herders financed the transfer of hundreds of groups to the capital. The Esplanade des Ministères crosses part of the city in a west-east direction culminating in the palaces of the Presidency and the Supreme, one in front of the other.

Bolsonaro chose to go to the Supreme Court, urging them to disobey its rulings. As a privileged target, within the Supreme Court, he chose Judge Alessandro de Moraes whom he attacked in the morning in Brasilia and in the afternoon in São Paulo, where the president climbed onto another huge car parked near of the Trianon-Masp park, an island of dense semi-forest vegetation in the middle New York Avenue Paulista. There he was accompanied by Captain Tarsicio Gomes de Freitas, Minister of Infrastructure.

“It is not possible to admit that a single man disturbs our freedom. Alexandre de Moraes ceases to be a scoundrel,” Bolsonaro fired. “Alexandre de Moraes stops oppressing the people, censoring (…) that all political prisoners be released. “
Strictly speaking, those arrested are not political prisoners but rather suspected of having instigated the coup and instigated the murder of magistrates.

Crimes

Bolsonaro’s bitterness with this magistrate goes on horseback to the campaign to launch a tribunal that has distanced itself from the executive. Moraes has become a particularly non-grata person since he included the president in an investigation into a “criminal organization” which disseminates false news of the “Cabinet of Hate”, which would operate in the Planalto Palace itself.

If this cause is successful, it could expose pacts between the president and the disinformation industry and send him to jail. Carlos bolsonaro, one of the sons of the president in charge of the government’s disinformation strategy and, before the dirty election campaign of 2018.

The Bolsonaro have reportedly committed several common law offenses since coming to power in 2019, in addition to others committed when the family set up a network of embezzlement and money laundering that enabled them build up equity that does not match your reported income and buy more than ten real estate and land for cash.

Through social networks, Moraes, emphasizing institutionalism, responded to Bolsonaro. “On September 7, we commemorate our independence, which guaranteed our freedom and which is only reinforced with absolute respect for democracy.

Patriotism

In San Pablo Bolsonaro, the patriotic feeling in phase with Independence Day touched a lot. “It is the awakening of a nation, I am certain that we will be great there before (when) we place Brazil in a preponderant place in the world”, he proclaimed at nearly four o’clock. thirty. Passing himself off as a victim of persecution, he asserted that he will not give in to the pressure. “I want to say to those who want to see me ineligible, over there in Brasilia, that only God can get me out of there (Planalto).” “I want to tell the scoundrels that I will never go to prison”, he reinforced in another challenge to justice.

The attacks on democracy this Tuesday, in front of tens of thousands of followers, are perhaps the most serious perpetrated by the authoritarian leader since his arrival in Planalto and will surely lead to responses in the coming days from the opposition and the Supreme Court.

The former PT presidential candidate, Fernando haddadHe argued that the statements of this September 7 of the former military are more than sufficient to open impeachment proceedings.

Assault on the Capitol

The president and his sons, members of the Bolsonaro clan, imagine themselves as the tropical mirror of the Trump family. During the first week of last January, the deputy and presidential son, Eduardo Bolsonaro, went to the White House to introduce her newborn daughter to Ivanka Trump (Donald’s daughter), with whom she took a family photo. While in Washington, Bolsonaro Jr. held meetings with activists linked to the assault on Capitol Hill, whom he spoke positively on social media.

This weekend The MP organized an international far-right summit in Brasilia, which was attended by another of Trump’s sons, and in which there were more or less explicit comments on the attack on the Capitol. This Monday evening Bolsonaro junior joined a group of seditious Brazilians who violated the security cordon established in the center of Brasilia and advanced towards the courthouse by threatening to invade it and claiming a coup.

The congressman may want to be the one to follow in the footsteps of the coup plotters from Washington to Brasilia. The threat to the Supreme Court seat did not materialize on September 7, but it still stands.