Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Bolsonaro, generals and the DF government encouraged terrorism; government was soft

The terrorists in the yellow shirt strolled freely through the Planalto Palace at 4 pm. They took pictures in front of the president’s office, they laughed, they broke things. They also vandalized the plenary of the Supreme Court, broke into ministers’ cabinets and stole their togas. They invaded the Senate floor, at least. They sprayed walls. It was a mixture of anarchy and Bolsonarist terrorism.

With no police, the horde destroyed the Praça dos Três Poderes. Authorities complicit, at least for negligence, must be prosecuted. It is necessary to immediately think about intervention in the Federal District government. In fact, there is no government, there is no order. Brasília is a lawless land.

The authorities of the new government of Congress and the Supreme seemed lost. Nobody appeared in public to say that there is authority and government. At the end of the afternoon, there was still only discussion about the creation of a “crisis office” in Congress. The command of the Three Powers looked like a silly cockroach.

Those immediately responsible for facilitating the subversive riot are Ibaneis Rocha (MDB), governor of the Federal District, and his chief of police, Anderson Torres, Minister of Justice in the coup government of Jair Bolsonaro. Ibaneis fired Torres after the filth was spilled. Besides, where were the federal police? Nobody noticed that caravans with thousands of subversives were on their way to the capital of the Republic? What about the Institutional Security Office? It’s a joke.

It wasn’t until around 4:30 pm that riot police and cavalry arrived at the center of the riot. Around 5 pm, there were vague reports that the National Force would appear, that the police had begun to clear the square of the horde and that control of the STF headquarters had been regained.

Shortly before the riot, DF police officers chatted and took pictures with people from the horde. Many of the coup bandits left the terrorist camp in front of the Army Headquarters to make raids against the Three Powers. Others celebrated the criminal riot with fireworks and throwing things at police cars.

Ibaneis Rocha and his Bolsonarist police chief handed over the center of federal power to the criminal horde; the governor called the thugs “protesters”. He is primarily responsible.

Very problematic, at least because of the intolerable naivety of someone in his position, was the position of Flavio Dino, Lula da Silva’s Minister of Justice. If he was unable to guarantee security in the announced invasion of Brasília, he should have put one finger in the eye and the other in the nose of Ibaneis: if there had been a terrorist riot, the fault would have been on the negligent governor of the DF. He didn’t. Besides, he should have a “plan B”. If so, it obviously didn’t work.

More serious, for almost complicity, there is José Múcio, Minister of Defense, who in his inauguration called the meeting of coup bands in front of barracks “democratic manifestations”, in which he had friends and relatives, as he himself said.

The DF and Ibaneis police had already demonstrated what kind of people they are when they reacted in a soft and inept way to the attempted invasion by the Federal Police on December 12, during Lula’s diplomacy. They remained soft, to say the least, even after it was found that Bolsonarist militias were attempting terrorist attacks, such as on December 24th, in the vicinity of Brasília airport.

It is necessary to go through this police with a fine-tooth comb, investigate the negligent, conniving, prosecute and expel them.

The work, as a whole, however, is by Bolsonaro, his reserve and active generals, part of the Armed Forces, the attorney general, Augusto Aras, lenient with the coup escalation encouraged by the government of darkness, and businessmen who finance rallies and coup agglomerations for years.

To begin with, Bolsonaro and his immediate accomplices, Alberto Heleno and Braga Netto, must be prosecuted for incitements, campaigns and acts that culminated in this wave of terrorism. The Armed Forces, moreover, the Army in particular, tolerated, at least, the gathering of coup plotters and terrorists around its walls. It was predictable. At least since 2018, they trample the Constitution with speeches between unconstitutional and coup supporters.

Now, it is necessary to give enough. It is necessary to investigate, prosecute and judge all promoters of subversion, in the police, in the governments, in the attorney general and in the Armed Forces. No amnesty.