Led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil commemorated yesterday, Monday, with a series of events, the first anniversary of the failure of the coup uprising carried out by the followers of far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro. The president asked that those responsible for that riot be “exemplarily punished.”
“There is no forgiveness against those who attack democracy, their own country and their own people,” Lula said in a solemn speech during an event held in a Congress room before the country’s main authorities. The progressive leader celebrated “the victory of democracy over authoritarianism.”
On January 8 of last year, a week after Lula replaced Bolsonaro in power, thousands of people arrived at the Three Powers Square in Brasilia and forcibly broke into the Planalto palace – headquarters of the Executive. Congress and in the building of the Supreme Federal Court (STF).
In this way, the Bolsonaristas emulated the followers of the American Donald Trump who two years earlier – on January 6, 2021 – had violently entered the Washington Capitol to prevent the transfer of power to Joe Biden, alleging alleged electoral fraud.
When the events in Brasilia took place, Lula had already assumed power on January 1 without the assistance of Bolsonaro, who a few hours before had left Brazil to settle for a time in Miami. However, hundreds of his followers had been sleeping for weeks in front of the Army Headquarters in the Brazilian capital – and in front of barracks in other cities – demanding that the military prevent Lula’s inauguration based on alleged electoral fraud in the Lula elections. October 2022, where Bolsonaro was defeated. In the two months that followed the elections, roads were also blocked and other actions were carried out to demand that Bolsonaro – a former army captain – not abandon power and lead a coup d’état.
Neither the far-right leader nor the military acted, but thousands of Bolsonaro supporters did. They entered the headquarters of the three Brazilian powers and destroyed what they could in the face of the passivity of the police. The next day, 2,170 people were arrested, of whom 66 remain imprisoned today, several of them preventively. About thirty people have already been sentenced – to sentences of up to 17 years in prison -, while fifty are accused of carrying out the uprising or financing it. Following the script written by Trump, Bolsonaro was initially passive and then ambiguously distanced himself from his violent followers.
“Democracy is imperfect, because we are human and, therefore, imperfect,” Lula said yesterday in Congress. “But we all have the duty to join forces to improve it,” he added. “There will not be full democracy as long as inequalities persist, whether in terms of income, race, gender, sexual orientation, access to health, education and other public services,” added the president, exhibiting his progressive ideology in contrast to the values of Bolsonaro.
The event, which had as its official motto “Unbreakable Democracy”, was attended, in addition to Lula, by the heads of the other two branches of government, the presidents of the Senate – and of the legislative branch -, Rodrigo Pacheco, and of the Supreme Court, Luiz Roberto Barroso. , as well as the majority of governors, except for a handful of Bolsonaro allies. Among authorities from the three powers and members of civil society, the three commanders of the Armed Forces were also present.
“The powers remain vigilant against the traitors of the country and against the minority that wants to take power without respecting the Constitution,” Pacheco said during the event.
On the other hand, Barroso had previously said in another event at the STF headquarters that “Treating what happened with condescension is giving an incentive so that the next defeated (in elections) also feel they have the right to prey on public institutions.”
For his part, the president of the Superior Electoral Court and STF magistrate, Alexandre de Moraes, proposed the regulation of social networks with the argument that they are used to call for protests and mobilizations such as the far-right uprising last year. “It is urgent to neutralize one of the great dangers of democracy, which is the instrumentalization of social networks by the new extremist digital populism,” said De Moraes. “This new and evil extremist digital populism has evolved using the same methods used by the Nazi and fascist regimes at the beginning of the 20th century,” the magistrate added.
In addition to the official events, demonstrations in defense of democracy also took place yesterday Monday in the main cities of Brazil.
