Five years after her overthrow, the former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff affirmed that President Jair Bolsonaro is flirting with “hitting within the coup” initiated in 2016 with the political trial that removed her from office on August 31, 2016. The former president described her departure from power as a “hybrid war” aimed at implementing a neoliberal model and warned that the demonstrations called for next September 7 , in support of Bolsonaro, are financed by soybean associations, police and evangelical groups.
“The coup has already happened (in 2016). What we are experiencing are the stages of the possible hardening of the political regime in Brazil. The government is flirting with the possibility of a coup within a coup “, said Rousseff, representative of the Workers’ Party.
The ex-president warned about a “dress rehearsal for a coup” that will take place with the demonstrations called by Bolsonaro for September 7, Independence Day, financed by soybean associations, police and fundamentalist evangelical groups.
“It is necessary to understand this game. The coup occurred on August 31, 2016. What we are experiencing now is the possibility of a new coup based on the derivations of hybrid warfare. Behind it was a parliamentary, judicial and media coup, but above all of the financial sector, of financial capitalism, a neoliberal coup “, argued in an interview with the Perseu Abramo Foundation.
On the Judiciary and the arrest of Lula
The former president said that currently the Judiciary, especially the Federal Supreme Court, reacted to Bolsonaro’s authoritarian moves. “Only now has the Judicial Power perceived the situation? They do so because it reached them. When five years ago I said that the coup would not stop there, it is because I knew there would be a rapid advance on institutions “, assured.
Rousseff also maintained that the arrest of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to disqualify him in 2018 was part of the advance of the financial sector to avoid losing control of the country.
Rousseff lashed out at the Federal Supreme Court for having accepted, at that time, “having been mentored by the Army,” regarding the pressure exerted to keep Lula in prison.
The Army to power
In this context, he cited the advance in parallel of Army power with generals being appointed ministers in the Cabinet of Institutional Security and Defense by Temer (2016-2018) and the current Defense Minister, Walter Braga Netto, intervener in the internal security of Rio de Janeiro.
Regarding Bolsonaro, he argued that the demonstrations that Bolsonarista groups are preparing to protest against the Supreme Court “is a general rehearsal of the coup that will depend on the response you will have “.
Bolsonaro, a neo-fascist
Rousseff described Bolsonaro as a “neo-fascist” who “does not have the chip of moderation and who needs the conflict” and recalled that the far-right president in 2019, during a visit to Donald Trump, declared that “he was not going to rebuild anything.” “He always said the same thing, that he wants to end the communists and leftists who operate in Brazil,” the ex-president added.
Bolsonaro became nationally famous in the impeachment against Rousseff, when in your vote in favor of the overthrow celebrated that the president had been tortured during the military dictatorship, vindicating the head of the regime’s secret police, Carlos Ustra. “My vote is in homage to Carlos Alberto Ustra“, said Bolsonaro, ex-captain from army.
Rousseff is one of the political prisoners of the dictatorship who spent the longest time in detention, from January 1970 to December 1972. She was tortured for 22 days in a row and during her tenure she created the truth commission to investigate the crimes of the de facto regime. An initiative that opened an intern in the Army, to the point that, for publicly criticizing her for it, the then Brigadier General Hamilton Mourao, today Bolsonaro’s vice president, was dismissed.
A suspicious attack on Dilma’s apartment
On the new anniversary of Rousseff’s dismissal, she had a police incident investigated by the Leblon 14 police station, in Rio de Janeiro. Last Saturday, unknown persons broke the door and entered an apartment of the former president that is empty in the Ipanema neighborhood and in which the ex-president’s mother lived her last years.
The building has a 24-hour doorman and the police requested the security cameras to demand an investigation.
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