2023-04-20 05:01:00
The chief minister of the Institutional Security Cabinet (GSI) of the Brazilian presidency, Marco Edson Gonçalves Dias, resigned this Wednesday to the position after the press released images that question the actions of the organization during the coup attempt on January 8. His departure from his government came shortly after a meeting with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who accepted his resignation. This is the first fall of a minister in the current administrationfour months and 19 days after the start of Lula’s term.
What do the footage show?
Gonçalves Dias presented his resignation a few hours after the CNN Brazil channel released images from the security cameras of the Planalto presidential palace in which appears at the headquarters of the presidency on the day of the coup acts. The now ex-minister is initially seen walking the corridors of the third floor of the presidency and entering the office of the head of state, but he can also be seen next to some of the protesters who invaded the facilities, to whom he apparently points an emergency exit.
In another image, one of Gonçalves Dias’ advisers appears talking with the invaders of the Palace, greeting them and even offering them a bottle of water. According to the Institutional Security Cabinet, the images reflect “the actions of the security agents, whose objective, at first, was to evacuate the third and fourth floors of the Planalto Palace.”
Gonçalves Dias was a soldier very close to Lula. He worked in the security of the presidency in the first two terms of the leftist leader and his successor Dilma Rousseff, and was in charge of Lula’s security during the 2022 electoral campaign. He thus became the favorite to assume the Cabinet Institutional Security.
The body, however, was largely associated with former President Jair Bolsonaro over the past four years. The then chief of staff, General Augusto Heleno, reduced the body by appointing soldiers he trusted and with a strong rejection of the Workers’ Party (PT).
This was one of the reasons why, even during the work of the transitional cabinet, Lula’s team decided to transfer the official security of the president from the GSI to the Federal Police. Gonçalves Dias then became the target of harsh internal criticism with the coup act on January 8, when Bolsonaro supporters invaded and destroyed the Planalto, the National Congress and the headquarters of the Supreme Court. Some Lula allies pointed out that there was inaction by the GSI during the attacks.
Gonçalves Dias was scheduled to appear this Wednesday before the Public Security Commission of the Chamber of Deputies to give explanations about the events of January 8, after a request approved in March by the deputies. At the last moment, after the disclosure of the images, the general alleged health problems and canceled his participation.
The executive secretary of the Ministry of Justice, Ricardo Cappelli, will be in charge of assuming the leadership of the GSI on an interim basis. Cappelli had already been appointed as controller of public security in Brasilia shortly after the January 8 coup. On his Twitter account, he highlighted that he was temporarily assuming the Institutional Security Cabinet “with balance, firmness and the usual commitment to Brazil.”
“There will be no impunity”
Shortly before announcing the minister’s resignation, the Brazilian presidency released a statement in which it stressed that the participation of the military in the coup acts has been under investigation by the Supreme Court since February 27 and affirmed that all those responsible will be punished.
The note points out that the coup acts took place only a week after Lula took office and that, for this reason, at that time there were still several members of the previous administration in the security teams of the presidency.
“The orientation of the government remains the same: there will be no impunity for those involved in the criminal acts of January 8“, says the statement. So far, 2,151 people have been detained, including some thirty soldiers..
Some 300 people are still in jail and the rest were released, but they will respond to the accusations in freedom, under strict precautionary measures. This Tuesday, the Supreme Court began a trial to admit charges against the first 100 defendants, which will conclude next Monday.
A “renewed” Army
In the morning, before the resignation of Gonçalves Dias was announced, the president of Brazil led the Army Day celebrations, in an act of strong symbolism after the attempted coup by the ultra-right. The sole speaker at the ceremony was the commander of the Army, General Tomás Ribeiro Paiva, who underlined the institutional role of that force, about which he said that “it owes respect to the population, to the institutions and, above all, to the Constitution “.
General Paiva’s message seemed to allude to the last four years, a period in which then-President Jair Bolsonaro, captain of the Army reserve, tried on more than one occasion to add the Armed Forces to his continuous attacks against democratic institutions. . The general was emphatic and assured that The Army “is an apolitical and impartial State institution”whose mission is “the defense of the homeland, independence, the republic and democracy”.
Lula, along with Defense Minister José Mucio Monteiro and General Paiva, presided over the ceremony and parade of troops at the Army Headquarters in Brasilia. Also present were the presidents of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco, and of the Federal Supreme Court, Rosa Weber, as well as the Attorney General of the Republic, Augusto Aras. The presence of the ex-commander of the Army, Eduardo Vilas Boas, a fierce critic of Lula in the past, drew attention.
This is the first event that Vilas Boas shares with Lula after, in 2018, he called on the Brazilian population to “repudiate impunity”, the day before a key Supreme Court ruling on the then detained former president. A book published in 2021 revealed that this threatening tweet was prepared by the entire Army High Command and released in time to appear on the “Jornal Nacional”, the newscast with the highest audience in Brazil.
Paiva was appointed commander of the Army in January by Lula after the dismissal of General Julio César Arruda, for his alleged complicity with the activists who invaded the headquarters of the three powers on the eighth of that month. The military agenda follows the guidelines of an internal document of the Armed Forces published by the newspaper Newspaperwhich says the Army needs to build credibility by reinforcing its non-partisan and apolitical image.
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