Lula and Villas Bôas meet for the 1st time after tweet – 04/19/2023 – Politics

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) met this Tuesday (19) for the first time with former Army commander Eduardo Villas Bôas after the general published a text on Twitter in which he pressured the STF (Federal Supreme Court) on the eve of the PT’s habeas corpus trial, in 2018.

The two were in the first row of the stage set up in front of the Headquarters, in Brasília, for the commemoration of Army Day. Villas Bôas was seated at the left end of the stage and Lula, in the center. The two did not interact.

The former commander has ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), a degenerative neuromotor disease. Close people claim that, despite the situation, the general remains conscious and communicates by blinking an eye.

Out of the Army since the end of 2018, Villas Bôas does not miss Force events, despite the illness. At ceremonies, he is usually greeted and takes pictures with the military.

“In this situation that Brazil is experiencing, it remains to ask the institutions and the people who is really thinking about the good of the country and future generations and who is only concerned with personal interests?”, asked the then commander of the Army, in 2018, in the famous tweet on the eve of Lula’s trial.

“I assure the Nation that the Brazilian Army believes it shares the desire of all good citizens to repudiate impunity and respect the Constitution, social peace and Democracy, as well as remaining attentive to its institutional missions”, he added.

The incendiary tone of the publication, which repudiated “impunity” in reference to Lula, was the Army’s main public movement against the PT.

The presence of Villas Bôas at this Tuesday’s event, alongside Lula, was described by generals Sheet as a sign that the tweet was not a threat. In an attempt to soften the criticism, two of them said that the general’s post was just an expression of the population’s indignation.