8/1: one day after attacks, Lula did not hide his indignation – 01/08/2024 – Power

The day after the attacks on January 8, President Lula (PT) repeated to ministers, assistants and presidents of other Powers that he had lost elections many times and that he did not understand why those who had been defeated in October did not accept the result.

On the morning of January 9th, Lula gathered the leadership of the three Powers at the Palácio do Planalto, in a response articulated on the 8th, as a way of showing unity between the institutions.

“He said: I was defeated, I understood that I was defeated and I moved on to other disputes. He said that a lot. We won. And why don’t those who were defeated understand this and don’t wait for time to pass and then compete?” Senator Veneziano Vital do Rêgo (MDB-PB), who was acting president of the Senate in the absence of Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG).

Veneziano states that the president of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), Rosa Weber, did not hide her indignation. The minister, according to him, was firm, but “emotionally shaken and shocked”.

“[Imagine] the president of the Supreme Court, close to retiring, is faced with what [há] more terrifying. The building was only left standing by the stone, lime and marble structures. The rest was all over inside. This shocks. It’s the heritage, the institution, the violence, the debauchery, the aggression out of nothing for nothing.”

The report is reinforced by the current president of the STF, Luís Roberto Barroso. The minister says that Rosa, like the other authorities present at the meeting, was sad.

“It’s a mixture of shock and indignation and also the feeling that none of this could shake us. That soon everything would be rebuilt and that Justice is much more than a building, it has an immaterial value that cannot be physically attacked. Anyone who believes in Justice knows this. [estávamos] indignant, sad”, says the minister.

The minister told the Sheet that the meeting with Lula was permeated by speeches defending justice for the attacks.

“There were natural manifestations of indignation and willingness to punish the people who did this, financed this and those who were painfully negligent or complicit in what happened. And there were effectively arrests of people who were in the chain of command and had a duty to have acted and did not act.”

At the end of that meeting, the presidents of the three Powers released a note condemning the acts of vandalism that occurred in Brasília the day before.

“The Powers of the Republic, defenders of democracy and the 1988 Constitutional Charter, reject the terrorist acts, vandalism, criminals and coup plotters that took place yesterday afternoon in Brasília”, said the text.

The president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), also signed the document, with Lula, Barroso, Rosa and Veneziano.

In addition to them, there were other authorities at the meeting, including vice-president Geraldo Alckmin (PSB). Alckmin assessed the episode as serious not only because of the destruction of the buildings, but because, for him, there was in fact a threat of a coup in the country. “A patriot is someone who respects democracy. The opposite of that is called a coup leader,” he told Sheet.

According to the chief minister of the Institutional Relations Secretariat, Alexandre Padilha (PT), who was also present, the general assessment of the authorities was that the previous day had been an attack on democracy.

“Everyone, everyone, everyone understood it as an attack on democracy. Everyone, absolutely everyone. I saw President Arthur Lira’s face of indignation, for example, at what had happened.”

According to Padilha, General Júlio Cesar de Arruda, commander of the Army, recognized the seriousness of the attacks on the 9th morning.

“He had the perception that he had crossed the line of just protest and started to have an attitude, in fact, of attacking democracy. A coup-like desire to dismantle and destroy institutions”, says Padilha.

On that 9th, in addition to the meeting in the morning, Lula met with the ministers of Defense, José Múcio Monteiro, Justice, Flávio Dino, and the three commanders of the Armed Forces: Arruda, Admiral Marcos Sampaio Olsen, commander of the Navy; Brigadier Marcelo Damasceno, commander of the Air Force. The meeting lasted about an hour.

Afterwards, the president received governors for a meeting at Palácio do Planalto in another sign of unity, and promoted a walk from Palácio do Planalto to the STF — which had been the most vandalized building the day before.

Although he acted to postpone the arrest of protesters who were camped at the Army headquarters on January 8, Arruda admitted surprise at what happened, according to Padilha.

The minister says he heard the report that until then Arruda considered the demonstrations in front of the barracks as peaceful and did not imagine that they would evolve into attacks.

“So, in my opinion, the 8th is also a turning of the page for several individual people, with different levels of leadership, of institutional political actors, of understanding the real risk that existed of skipping a beat or not containing it in the right way. that coup planning as vehemently as possible”, assesses Padilha.

Still on January 9, at night, Lula met the governors or representatives of the 26 states and the Federal District at the Palácio do Planalto and the heads of the STF, the Chamber and the Senate.

At the meeting, Lula stated that the protesters wanted a “coup and there won’t be a coup”.

After the meeting, the president and authorities walked through Praça dos Três Poderes to the destroyed facilities of the Supreme Court.