“How could it happen?”. The question overwhelms a good part of society after what is called “the Brazilian Capitol“. While there is no shortage of observers who believe that Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has increased his political capital by the way he dealt with the coup act, others think that the president did nothing more than expose the precariousness of the alliances with which he came to the government after defeating Jair Bolsonaro at the polls for less than two points. The coexistence of the left, the center and even the right does not seem to have passed the first test of a common habitat.
The Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) was headless during the week in which the Bolsonaristas prepared their so-called “seizure of power.” When the dome came into operation, Abin issued several alerts about imminent danger. “There was an increase in the number of charter buses going to Brasília this weekend. There are a total of 105 buses, with some 3,900 passengers,” a dispatch quoted press as saying. “There are still calls for violent actions and attempts to occupy public buildings, especially in the Esplanade of the Ministries,” adds another, on January 7, anticipating the facts. Did Lula know about those warnings or did they get lost along the way? If he knew them, it has been conjectured, the Government could “let do” to the extremists their task so that, despite the destruction, they pave the way for the fight against Bolsonarismo, uniting behind them the media, the business community and part of the conservative spectrum?
This hypothesis comes up against other aspects of a complex reality. According to or globeIn the most difficult hours of Sunday, Lula himself was especially irritated with his Defense Minister, the moderate José Múcio Monteiro, who had defined the Bolsonaro camps as “a demonstration of democracy“.
The military factor
Those encamped in front of Army units were evicted in 24 hours, but only on top of the ashes left by the attacks in Brasilia. One of the pre-existing difficulties in doing so was revealed by the analyst Lauro Jardim: most of the radicals are retired military or family members of active duty military. “In other words, the Army acted in a corporate way. It didn’t want to take any action against people who were in any way close to it.”
In these hours, it was clear to Lula that relations with the Armed Forces, which have been maintained in silence about the events of January 8, represent a issue perhaps greater than dealing with a majority of opposition governors or a conservative Congress. The uniformed were showered with privileges to the point of co-governing with the extreme right. Within the institution, a sector of its members is not indifferent to Bolsonaro’s preaching. For the rest, there is an old aversion to the Workers’ Party (PT), which the extreme right tried to channel.
According to the newspaper Condition, Lula received information that among the list of financiers of the coup act there are businessmen agricultural and others with connections abroad. Not surprisingly, on Sunday he spoke of the “evil agribusiness” that causes environmental disasters. Before exploding with rage, Lula had proposed the coexistence in his government of the environmentalist leader, Marina Silva, at the head of the Ministry of the Environment, and Carlos Favaro, a representative of the businessmen of the indicated sector, in that of Agriculture.