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The Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has said he suspects hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro among the presidential staff facilitated the entry of insurrectionists who stormed his presidential palace seeking to overthrow Brazil’s government.
Speaking to a group of political journalists in Brasília’s Planalto palace – one of three buildings trashed by the pro-Bolsonaro mob last Sunday – Lula vowed to carry out a “thorough screening” of employees in the wake of the historic attack.
“I am waiting for the dust to settle. I want to see all of the [security] tapes that were recorded inside the supreme court, congress and the Planalto presidential palace,” Lula said on Thursday morning.
“[But] many people were complicit in this … many people in the military police were complicit. There were many people in the armed forces here inside [the palace] who were complicit,” added the leftist veteran, as a bodyguard carrying a flexible bulletproof screen loitered behind him.
“We are carrying out a thorough screening [of our staff] because the truth is that the [presidential] palace was full of Bolsonaristas and military officials and we want to try to correct this so we can appoint career civil servants – preferably civilian ones … so that this because a civilized department.”
“Nobody who is suspected of being a hardcore Bolsonarista can be allowed to remain in the palace.”
“How can I have someone at the door of my office who might shoot me?” Lula added, pointing to media reports he said he had read about military officials vowing to assassinate him.
The ease with which thousands of fanatical supporters of Brazil’s former far-right leader marauded through the country’s most important democratic institutions has shocked the nation and the world, and sparked deep soul-searching among members of Lula’s 12-day-old government.
“I feel very, very, very angry about what happened,” Lula told journalists over breakfast at the palace he previously occupied between 2003 and 2010.
“I am convinced that the door to the Planalto palace was opened so these people could get in because I didn’t see the front door had been broken down. And that means that somebody facilitated their entry here,” Lula said.
Brazil’s president added: “What happened was an alert, a major alert, and we must take more care. We need to understand that we won an election and we beat Bolsonaro but Bolsonarismo is still out there. And fanatical Bolsonarismo is very tricky because it respects no-one.”
Fears over a new round of pro-Bolsonaro protests came to nothing on Wednesday evening, after a massive deployment of security forces around the palace, congress and supreme court.
“We need to be wary but not afraid,” about the prospect of future episodes of violence, Lula said.
More details to follow…
English (US)