Bolsonaro’s CPMI – 04/28/2023 – Demétrio Magnoli

André Fernandes (PL-CE), the first name on the list of signatures of the 8/1 Mixed Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, is among those investigated for the attempted coup d’état. Back then, the Bolsonarist scum imagined the CPMI as a factory of lies destined to connect Lulism to the coup plot. They did not anticipate the possibility that the commission will tell the whole truth about events in Brasilia.

Back then, the Lula government maneuvered to stop the CPMI – and, typically, white-plate journalism rushed to offer arguments that were as obvious as they were primitive. One: the initiative was from Bolsonarism, and with bad intentions. And? How about betting on the ability of Brazilians to see factual reality? Two: the investigation would shed light on the complicity of the military with the coup, creating sharp edges in the barracks. And? Democracies punish coup plotters, with or without a green uniform.

The third argument, which was the decisive one, remained conveniently hidden: the judicial system would take care of the matter, sparing the government tensions with its neo-allies in Congress. Lula was betting on the famous “Brazilian cordiality” – that is, on an implicit pact of impunity for the coup leadership organized around Bolsonaro himself. Without CPMI, no one would produce an official narrative about the long political plot that led to 8/1 – and only the stupid vandals caught in the act would pay for the crime against democracy.

Coup, even failed, is not a joke. Congress now has the opportunity to prove to the nation that there is a parliamentary majority committed to democratic institutions. For that, the 8/1 CPMI must be known as Bolsonaro’s CPMI – and for reasons opposite to the wishes of the André Fernandes clique.

Selfies from the vandals helped incriminate them. Videos from security cameras expose criminal omissions by the GSI, the Presidential Guard Battalion and police forces. But the CPMI would do well to assume that the coup attempt was not filmed or photographed. The coup core was not in the palaces invaded on 8/1. The final act was just the conclusion of a spectacle that unfolded throughout Bolsonaro’s term.

CPMI’s democratic parliamentarians have the mission to tell two stories. The first is the political history of the organization, in broad daylight, of a movement whose aim was the overthrow of the democratic system. Its fabric encompasses the presidential speeches on the virtues of the military dictatorship, the appeals for the intervention of “my Army” in front of the Brasília HQ on April 19, 2020, the threats to the STF on September 7, 2021 and the litany of falsehoods about the electronic voting machines that reached a paroxysm at the ambassadorial rally on July 18, 2022. Bolsonaro was not doped during this entire journey.

The second is the criminal history of the underground articulation of coup plots by the inner circle of Bolsonarism. There is a lot to be revealed, from the resignation of the Minister of Defense, Fernando Azevedo, and the three military commanders, on March 30, 2021, to the draft of the coup seized from the Minister of Justice (!?) Anderson Torres, passing through the report by the Ministry of Defense that suggested suspicions about electronic voting machines, in November 2022.

The parliamentary faction still faithful to Bolsonarism is preparing to set up a circus, shuffling the sentences of the two stories and making them unintelligible. There will, however, be a majority able to enshrine the factual truth.

In general, parliamentary committees serve exclusively for political disputes. In this case, it’s much more than that. The success of Bolsonaro’s CPMI must be measured by a demanding ruler: the provision of sufficient evidence to criminally prosecute the leading core of the failed coup d’état attempt.

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