Governor of San Pablo sacked military police commander for publicly supporting Jair Bolsonaro

The Governor of the Brazilian State of São Paulo, João Doria, on Monday dismissed a high command of the military police who publicly supported a march in favor of President Jair Bolsonaro and against the Supreme Court of Brazil. In addition, he attacked politicians opposed to the president.

The dismissal of the colonel Alexander Lacerda, who led a regional force in São Paulo with some 5,000 troops under his command, underlines the broad support Bolsonaro, a retired army captain, has among Brazil’s roughly 500,000 military police.

If the country’s military police supported their demands, it would represent a major risk for democracy in the largest country in Latin America, according to experts. Active duty military police are prohibited from holding political demonstrations.

According to the newspaper State of São Paulo, Lacerda posted a request on Facebook for the president’s “friends” to attend a march on September 7, in celebration of Brazil’s independence, in support of the president. “Freedom cannot be won, it is taken”he wrote, according to the newspaper report. “On 7/7 I will go.”

He also criticized his last boss, the governor of São Paulo, João Doria, and attacked high-ranking lawmakers as “cowards” and “gangsters”.

Doria, while praising the state military policeannounced Lacerda’s sacking at a press conference on Monday.

The officer “was dismissed this morning from his duties with the military police for indiscipline,” Doria announced. “Here in the state of Sao Paulo, we will not have political demonstrations of military police officers on active duty.”

State military police said in a statement that Lacerda’s case it will be reviewed by your internal affairs department.

Lacerda, who commands a troop of 5,000 men spread over 78 towns in the interior of Brazil’s richest and most populous state, he was called to make a statement after his posts, which are prohibited by the statutes of the establishment.

Critics argue that the head of state is trying to garner their support ahead of a presidential election which is set to be highly controversial next year.

Bolsonaro, who walks behind the former leftist president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva in most surveys, he questioned the electoral process and attacked the electoral authorities, raising fears that he will not accept defeat.

The leader of the Brazilian far right spoke, without proof, Suspicion of electronic voting fraud adopted by Brazil in 1996 and demanded the incorporation of a mixed system that includes voting on the ballot.

The president’s virulent campaign against electronic voting he was loaded with false information, which led the electoral tribunal and the Supreme Court to include him in investigations into the dissemination on social networks of “lies” which “undermine democracy”.

Bolsonaro is already under investigation also for suspected fraud with anticovid vaccines and other irregularities, which plunged the country into a serious institutional conflict, which even businessmen and banks have already demonstrated, condemning the “threats” of the far right to democracy.

Last week, the Attorney General of Brazil, Augusto Aras, he reported that opened a preliminary investigation versus Bolsonaro to find out if there were any irregularities in the president’s statements on the electronic ballot boxes, during a live broadcast.

At the end of July, during one of the statements he made weekly on social networks, Bolsonaro has raised suspicions about the electronic voting system used in the country, which he accused of “fraudulent“Without presenting any evidence.

The decision responds to two calls to action from Aras, launched by the magistrate of the Supreme Court of Justice, Carmen Lucie, after a complaint presented by a group of parliamentarians to the high court.

(With information from Reuters and EFE)

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