Brazil. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva “returns to work in the presidential palace”

“Tomorrow we return to work at the presidential palace. Always democracy,” Lula announced in a Facebook post on Sunday night.

Earlier, Lula described Sunday’s events as “barbaric” and said that the lack of proper security rules allowed Bolsonaro’s “fascist” supporters to break through the cordons set up by the Brazilian military in front of government buildings.

“These people are everything that is disgusting about politics,” Lula told a news conference in Sao Paulo, as quoted by CNN.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators stormed the Brazilian Supreme Court, Congress and Presidential Palace on Sunday, smashing windows, knocking over furniture and destroying artwork. The country’s original 1988 constitution and weapons were also stolen from the presidential security office.

Police took over government buildings after a three-hour siege by demonstrators and dispersed the crowd with tear gas. Justice Minister Flavio Dino said 200 participants in the attack had been detained, but the now suspended governor of the federal state where Brasilia Ibaneis Rocha is located said there were 400.

Dino said the ongoing investigation will aim to discover who financed the several hundred buses that brought Bolsonaro supporters to the capital, and to investigate why Rocha failed to adequately protect the buildings. Their occupation had been planned for at least two weeks via social media platforms such as Telegram and Twitter, but security forces had taken no action to prevent the attack, Reuters reported.

Late Sunday evening, Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes decided to suspend Governor Rocha for 90 days due to failings in the field of security. Earlier, Rocha fired Security Secretary Anderson Torres on the grounds that federal security forces were not up to the challenge of guarding government facilities. Rocha is a former ally of Bolsonaro.

Judge de Moraes also ordered the liquidation within 24 hours of the Bolsonaro supporters’ camps that they had set up in front of the military bases in the capital area and the unblocking of all roads and buildings. In addition, the judge ordered social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and TikTok to block the accounts of users “spreading anti-democratic propaganda”.

The current president, Luiz Inacio da Silva, known as Lula, was sworn in on January 1. He was in the state of Sao Paulo, in the south-east of the country, when the attack on the administration buildings in the capital began.

Former head of state Jair Bolsonaro on November 3, 2022, he acknowledged his defeat in the October presidential election and called on his supporters to end the massive roadblocks across the country. Some of the right-wing politician’s supporters continued to organize protests, claiming that Lula’s narrow margin – the current president won by a majority of 50.9 percent – was the result of electoral fraud.

The former president left Brazil on December 30 for the US with his closest associates. He then declared that he would “return to the country soon”.

Bolsonaro criticized Sunday’s attack by his supporters and stated in Twitter posts that he did not support this kind of action. “Peaceful demonstrations, in a lawful form, are part of democracy. However, the intrusions into public buildings that have taken place today, and were practiced by the left in 2013 and 2017, escape this rule,” Bolsonaro wrote.

The former head of state also said he rejected “accusations without evidence” made against him by President Lula on Sunday, saying that Bolsonaro contributed to the invasion of government offices in Brasília and “incited” his supporters.

The intrusion, which Reuters assessed as similar to the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol by supporters of the former US president Donald Trumphas been condemned by world leaders, including the current US president Joe Biden and President of France Emmanuel Macron and the head of state of Latin America.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva twice held the highest office in the country in the years 2003-2011. In 2018, he began serving a sentence of over 8 years in prison for his involvement in a corruption scandal. Three years later Supreme Court Brazil annulled this verdict, and soon the left-wing politician announced his start in the presidential election. He was a friend of regional left-wing dictators: Fidel Castro, who ruled Cuba, and Hugo Chavez, the socialist president of Venezuela in 1999-2013. Castro supported Lula in all his presidential campaigns, and Lula himself supported the Venezuelan president in his dispute with US President George W. Bush.

Former President Bolsonaro from 1991 to 2018 was Rio de Janeiro’s representative in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. During this period, his priorities were the defense of the citizens’ right to bear arms, the promotion of Christian values ​​and the fight against crime. He assumed the position of president in January 2019. On the day of assuming the presidency, he issued a series of regulations, one of which removed LGBT issues from the list of issues conducted by the ministry of women, family and human rights, and others gave the ministry of agriculture the power to designate indigenous lands to be put under cultivation. He enjoyed particularly close contacts with former US President Donald Trump. In the region, he distanced himself from Cuba and Venezuela by supporting Juan Guaido, who opposed the regime of Nicolas Maduro, and pledged to support “the restoration of democracy in Venezuela.”