Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has lamented that Jair Bolsonaro continues to deny his defeat in the elections and that this has served a group of «stooges» to eat the violent acts of Sunday in Brasilia, when thousands of followers of the former president stormed the headquarters of the three branches of government.
«Unfortunately the president who left power does not want to recognize defeat. Today I have still seen statements from him in which he does not recognize defeat. I can only consider them a group of crackpots, of people with little sense of the ridiculous,» Lula said Wednesday after a meeting with the heads of Congress.
«What happened I would even like not to consider it as a coup, I would even like to consider it as a minor thing, as a group of crackpots who still did not understand that the elections are over, who still do not want to accept that electronic ballot boxes are possibly the most perfect electoral model,» he said.
Lula not only criticized Bolsonaro, but also his party, the Liberal Party, which he reproached for insisting on attacks on the electoral system after the elections with the publication of a report whose conclusions delve into theories that had been dismissed many times before.
In this sense, he recalled how the fact of wanting to satisfy Bolsonaro’s pretensions has brought the party a «heavy fine» issued by the Supreme Court after the publication of the report, rejected by the judges.
Finally, and in the face of new proposals by Bolsonaro’s acolytes, Lula has warned that «any action that contravenes» Brazilian democracy will be punished within the legal margins. «Everyone will have the right to defend himself, will have the right to prove his innocence, but everyone will be punished,» he concluded.
Lula’s declarations took place during a meeting he held with the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, and the vice-president of the Senate, Veneziano Vital do Rêgo, and other congressmen, whom he thanked for the approval by the Congress of his decree for the Government to assume the security competences of Brasilia, after the dismissal of the local authorities.
The federal intervention in Brasília is scheduled to last until January 31, and in the meantime it will be Ricardo Cappelli who will be in charge of security in the capital in place of the incumbent governor Celina Leão, in office after the Supreme Court ordered the temporary dismissal of Ibaneis Rocha for omission and connivance with the assailants.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
