How Moraes stopped training at an Army academy – 01/02/2024 – Power

Minister Alexandre de Moraes, of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), said that one of the reasons he refused the invitation to do physical exercises again at an Army gym was the fear of being harassed by paparazzi.

The magistrate began training at the Planalto Military Command academy at the invitation of General Fernando Azevedo e Silva, first Minister of Defense in the Bolsonaro government. The two became close at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, when Moraes was Minister of Justice in the Temer and Azevedo government, military commander of the East and one of those responsible for security at the Games.

The location is in the Urban Military Sector, close to the Army headquarters and where the camp that served as a base for the January 8 coup plotters was set up.

He arrived at the complex – which also has an athletics track – at 6:40 am every day and exercised alongside soldiers. In August 2022, in one of the most acute moments of the crisis between Bolsonaro and the Judiciary, when the then president and allied generals were campaigning against the Brazilian electoral system, Moraes received a message that he would have to stop going to the gym, as the space was undergoing renovation.

Embarrassed, the magistrate asked his assistant – a captain of the Military Police, intermediary of the warning about the “reform” – to get the story straight. “I said, retirement in August? Retirement is usually in January, now they have all the physical tests… And obviously I wasn’t undergoing retirement, I was the one being retired from the gym, it was a polite way for me to be invited to to withdraw from the gym. It’s a shame, the gym is good, but it’s water under the bridge now,” Moraes told Sheet.

As part of a movement to relax relations between the Judiciary and the barracks – the members of the Armed Forces are mostly Bolsonaro supporters and critical of the actions of Moraes and the STF –, the current Army commander, General Tomás Ribeiro Paiva, invited the magistrate to return to using the gym. The minister thanked him, but refused.

“I didn’t come back because after that I already replaced, I set up my training, and obviously now, if I go back, there will be paparazzi there taking photos of me training, I’ll lose my peace of mind, and what’s more, I’ll disrupt the training of others”, said Moraes.

The minister does not declare this, but allies comment that he is sure that last year’s “disinvitation” was a direct order from Bolsonaro. One of the pieces of evidence in this version is that the warning about the “reform” came three days after Moraes took office as president of the TSE (Superior Electoral Court).

The event represented one of the biggest public embarrassments to Bolsonaro during his term. At a time when the then President of the Republic was relentlessly attacking electronic voting machines and institutions, Moraes made a fervent speech in defense of the electronic voting system and the democratic rule of law.

Without directly mentioning Bolsonaro’s name (only when thanking him for his presence, at the opening of the speech), he sent several messages to the head of the Executive. Moraes received a standing ovation, in an auditorium full of high-ranking authorities from the three Powers. Bolsonaro remained impassive, being one of the rare people present not to applaud.