Ostensible security at 8/1 event highlights omission a year earlier

The mobilization of 2,000 military police officers from the Federal District (PMDF) and another 250 from the National Force to carry out extensive patrolling in Brasília this Monday, January 8, with a focus on the early afternoon ceremony in Congress to mark the anniversary of the acts of vandalism in Praça dos Três Poderes, contrasts with the insufficient security in the same location a year ago.

The difference now is that there is no identified threat of an invasion of public buildings, whereas at the time there were dozens of alerts made by intelligence two days in advance. The number of PMs mobilized is more than three times higher than the 580 employed on January 8, 2023.

The strategy for the security of the Esplanada formalized on Thursday (4) by the interim Minister of Justice, Ricardo Cappelli, and the acting governor of the DF, Celina Leão (PP), defined planning, priorities for each body involved, police personnel and special traffic rules. In addition to the PMDF, personnel from the Federal Police (PF), Federal Highway Police (PRF) and other bodies are also called up. The Esplanada will be closed on the lane before Alameda dos Estados, close to Congress.

The ceremony in the Black Hall of Congress was proposed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) and should be attended by the heads of the Three Powers, governors, parliamentarians, State ministers and other authorities, totaling up to 500 guests. The reception for guests is scheduled for 2pm and the event should start at 3pm. “The day will be peaceful and monitoring”, promised the governor. “There is no chance that January 8 [de 2023] repeats itself”, added Cappelli.

Senator Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE) characterized the event scheduled for Monday with the participation of the entire Executive, part of the Legislature and ministers of the STF as “the joint attempt of the “owners of power” to impose a false narrative about the 8 of January”. A People’s Gazette, he highlighted that the new attempt to obscure events cannot hide “the clear negligence of those who should have prevented the invasions”.

Girão expressed his regret at the obstruction of investigations into acts of vandalism by the government, through the manipulation of the majority of members imposed on the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry (CPMI), created and closed in 2023 to investigate causes and omissions of the 8th of January. He concluded that “deliberate acts” that led to “that fateful day” have provoked “unprecedented injustice” along with the legal insecurity of the “activist, ideological and dictatorial Federal Supreme Court”.

Senator Hamilton Mourão (Republicanos-RS) released this Friday (5) a letter in which he characterizes the so-called “Unshaken Democracy Act” as the “Festival of Nothing”. In response to the invitation to participate in next Monday’s event in Congress, he refused due to the lack of “true republican spirit”, free from ideological inclinations, and also questioned the civic nature of a party, in this case the PT, which appropriates democracy, which belongs to all citizens, while denying them guarantees and rights. Mourão’s position is in line with 29 other opposition senators who signed a manifesto opposing the event on Thursday (4). Click here to check the senators’ text in full.

For a lawyer, Planalto wanted to demoralize the Military Police

Lawyer Cláudio Caivano, who represents prisoners from the 8th of January, highlighted to the newspaper that the presence of approximately 2 thousand police officers at this Monday’s event raises many questions compared to the context of a year earlier, when 35 alerts were sent to the then chief of the Institutional Security Office (GSI), General Marco Gonçalves Dias, about possible imminent attacks, but without due mobilization. He questions the contradiction between the current defense of democracy by security agents and the actions of the federal government that aimed to discredit the DF Military Police, perhaps with the aim of dismantling state corporations. Caivano also raises the possibility that the detention of the former PMDF Operations Commander, Colonel Jorge Eduardo Naime, for more than 10 months, is not a coincidence, suggesting that he could be considered a “living archive”.

In the lawyer’s view, the celebration organized by the government “in the name of democracy” reveals the relativization of democratic guarantees themselves and an ideological denial of reality. He further characterized what actually occurred on January 8, 2023 as a “trap to capture patriots who were trying to exercise their fundamental right to protest.”

Carolina Siebra, lawyer for other detainees, shares the view that the massive mobilization of police this time only highlights the full capacity of security forces, both district and federal, to prevent the incidents of January 8, but that, inexplicably, they did not they did.