March 2021 can be considered a key month to place a plane of rupture of the democratic order and the realization of a coup d’état, by Jair Bolsonaro and his allies, according to complaint filed by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR). On the 8th of that month, Supreme Court Minister Edson Facchin annulled the convictions of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, related to Operation Lava Jato, and made him eligible again.
Lula was being appointed as the main opponent of the then President Jair Bolsonaro in the following year presidential election and electoral polls showed the petista ahead.
The political situation mobilized the surroundings of Bolsonaro, which realized “the need for prompt regimentation of coordinated actions against the feared possibility that was avulted. Then began practices of execution of the articulated plan to maintain the power of the President of the Republic, notwithstanding the result that the ballot boxes offered the following year, ”says the Attorney General, Paulo Gonet, in the complaint presented to the court.
Still in March, a few days after Lula recovered his eligibility, the Bolsonaro support group, which would become the Core of the criminal organization Accused of crimes against PGR’s democratic institutions, he began to consider the then President of the Republic to be affected and disobeying STF decisions.
In the following weeks, the group would defend the idea of delegitimizing the Brazilian electoral process and the possible victory of Bolsonaro’s opponent.
“The group recorded the idea of ’establishing a discourse on electronic ballot boxes and votes’ and replicating this narrative ‘again and constantly’, in order to delegitimize possible electoral result that was unfavorable to him and provide conditions inducement of the deposition of the elected government,”, highlights the complaint.
Criticism of the polls
The insurrection plan took about three months to put into practice. On July 29 of that year, Jair Bolsonaro made a live broadcast on the Internet of the premises of the Planalto Palace, in which he criticized the electronic voting system and exalted the performance of the Armed Forces.
From that moment, according to PGR, Bolsonaro would make increasingly aggressive public pronouncements, with direct attacks on constituted powers, with the aim of causing indignation and revolt in his supporters. The ultimate goal, according to the complaint, would be to make the appeal to force if Lula won the 2022 elections.
Even with the decision of the House of Representatives, to maintain the system of digital voting and the counting of votes, in session on August 10, Bolsonaro insisted on attacks on the electoral system.
During the celebrations of September 7, 2021, Bolsonaro gave a speech in São Paulo, in which “he made known his purpose of no longer submitting to the deliberations from the Supreme Court, entrusted to his support of the Armed Forces.” By this time, according to PGR, the group around the then president had already set a strategy that included a Bolsonaro escape plan if support was missing for the coup.
“[Quero] Tell those who want to become ineligible in Brasilia: Only God takes me out of there. And those who think that with a pen can get me out of the presidency, I say one thing to all of us. We have three alternatives, especially for me: arrested, dead or with victory. [Quero] Tell the scoundrels that I will never be stuck, ”Bolsonaro said in his speech at the time.
Over the months and with the approach of the 2022 elections, the attacks on the electoral system were intensified, with false and manipulated accusations of alleged vulnerabilities of the electronic ballot boxes to fraud. All attacks on legitimacy have always been officially answered by judicial authorities with technical arguments, but this continued to be ignored by the group.
Meetings
On July 5, 2022, with Lula as a favorite to the presidential dispute, Bolsonaro would have called a ministerial meeting to incite ballot attacks and the dissemination of fake news against his opponent. At the meeting with the ministers, according to the prosecution’s complaint, “unnecessaryly spoken in ‘use of force’ as an alternative to be implemented if necessary.”
General Augusto Heleno, one of the accused of joining the coup core, even said at the meeting that what had to be done would have to happen before the election. “If you have to turn the table, it’s before the elections.”
On the 18th of that month, the then President of the Republic summoned ambassadors and diplomatic representatives from other countries for a meeting that made accusations of the alleged fraud that, according to Bolsonaro, would be committed in that year’s elections.
Actions
In addition to disclosing false information about the electoral system, according to the PGR, the group tried to intervene directly in the electoral process, as during the second round of the election, on October 31, federal road police officers did road operations to make it difficult for access to Voters to electoral zones where Lula had obtained more votes in the first round.
Federal Highway Police (PRF) operations were previously defined from mappings made by security agencies linked Ministry of Justice and mobilized illicitly for the task, according to PGR.
With Lula’s victory, criticism of the electoral system persisted, even after a ballot box, made by the Ministry of Defense, ensuring that no failure was found in the electronic ballot box.
The idea of maintaining criticism of the electoral system after Bolsonaro’s defeat was intended to stimulate the militancy of the then President, whose mandate would end on December 31, to remain camped, in front of the barracks, asking for military intervention against The inauguration of the victorious opposing candidate.
The coup core intended to mobilize the militancy to raise the Armed Forces, in particular, the Army, to impose an exception regime, prevent Lula’s possession and guarantee the permanence of the defeated candidate in the Presidency of the Republic.
In November 2022, a few weeks before Lula’s inauguration, special forces training officers, called Kids Blacks, gathered to try to gain support from the Army’s high summit. In addition to pressuring the command of the armed force, the group articulated to attack, on the virtual networks, the general officers who opposed the ongoing coup.
Minutes of executive acts were also conceived that formalized the breach of the constitutional order, which included, among their measures, the arrest of the then president of the Supreme Court, Minister Alexandre de Moraes.
According to the PGR, the then Minister of Defense, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Azevedo, also met with the commanders of the three forces, to raise support for the coup, but would only have had the adhesion of the maximum representative of the Navy, Admiral Almir Garnier Santos.
Murder
If the fake news campaigns were not enough to discredit the electoral system, the affronts to judicial authorities, the defamation against military who did not support the insurrection and articulation to perform the coup, members of the criminal organization would also have structured, within the Planalto palace , according to PGR, a plan, called yellow-green daggerto murder Lula, his deputy, Geraldo Alckmin, and Alexandre de Moraes.
“The plan was designed and brought about to the President of the Republic, who anciented to him, at the time when the Ministry of Defense was released in the contingency of recognizing the lack of detection of election fraud,” he writes PGR, in the complaint filed.
Preparations for the murders were completed and were not only carried out on December 15 because they could not coopt the then army commander at the last minute.
The prosecutor’s complaint describes that, after all these ill -fated steps, “frustration dominated members of the criminal organization.” But even so, they did not give up the plans to keep Bolsonaro in power.
Manifestations against the new President of the Republic, Lula, already sworn in, scheduled for January 8 in Brasilia, became the great hope of realizing the coup.
“The organization encouraged the mobilization of the group of people in front of the Army Headquarters in Brasilia, which called for military intervention in politics. The participants of that journey descended the entire avenue that connects the urban military sector to the National Congress, accompanied and escorted by military police from the Federal District, ”says the complaint.
The demonstrations of January 8 were marked by invasions and vandalism to the headquarters of the three powers and have been viewed, in various criminal proceedings, by the Supreme Court, as an attempt to coup.
According to the PGR, the coup, which had been aligned and put in progress since mid -2021, was not realized only because the Army Commander and regional commanders of the Armed Force decided not to join and therefore to keep in their constitutional role. .
