Despite Brazil’s popular image, the country of Carnaval and rowdy street parades suffers the recent collective trauma of a US-backed military dictatorship that smothered civil society for over 20 years. Now, a new investigation claims a controversial former leader brought the country perilously close to returning to authoritarian rule.
The preliminary report, released on Tuesday by the National Congress of Brazil, found that ex-President Jair Bolsonaro was the “intellectual or moral” architect of “a willful and premeditated coup attempt” after his loss in last year’s presidential election.
“Unlike what the Bolsonaro supporters maintain, the eighth of January was not a spontaneous or disorganized movement,” said Senator Eliziane Gama, referring to the ransacking of government buildings in the country’s capital earlier this year that has become infamous in Brazil. “It was an idealized, planned and prepared mobilization in advance.”
The lengthy report, comprising more than 1,300 pages, suggests Bolsonaro should be charged with criminal association, political violence, abolition of democratic rule of law and coup d’état under Brazil’s penal code.
The evidence will now be brought before the country’s attorney general, who is tasked with making the final decision as to whether to charge the former leader.
The investigation determined Bolsonaro sought to work through a number of channels to create a generalized climate of chaos that would give the country’s military an excuse to intervene. The bombastic ex-president is known for praising the country’s former military dictatorship, which lasted until 1985; he once claimed “the only mistake of the dictatorship was torturing and not killing.” In fact, hundreds of Brazilians were killed or disappeared during military rule, and some 20,000 were tortured.
The military figures are among the 61 people the report maintains were part of Bolsonaro’s plot to undermine Brazilian democracy, including the events earlier this year which saw the country’s Supreme Federal Court, National Congress and presidential palace vandalized.
“There was one goal only: to storm or to allow the three branches of government to be stormed, destabilize the administration, set the country on fire, provoke chaos and political disorder – and even, if necessary, a civil war,” read the report.