It is a very compromising document which was found in the home of a member of Jair Bolsonaro’s government. A draft decree that could have allowed the cancellation of the election of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as president was found during searches by the federal police at the home of Anderson Torres following revelations from the daily Folha de S. PauloThursday, January 12.
After these revelations, the former justice minister of Jair Bolsonaro, currently in the United States, was expected firmly Friday by the Brazilian authorities. He is the subject of an arrest warrant from a judge of the Supreme Court for “collision” presumed in the bolsonarists who stormed the places of power in Brasilia on Sunday.
“We will wait for him to show up until Monday. If this is not the case, we will start the extradition request procedure next week.”announced on Friday Flavio Dino, Minister of Justice for leftist President Lula, who took office on 1er January.
Mr. Torres has continued to proclaim his innocence and has promised to return to Brazil to surrender to the authorities, without however communicating a precise date.
A proof of preparation of a coup d’etat?
The three-page document found at his home provides for the federal government to take control of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), which oversees the smooth running of the ballot, “to ensure the preservation and restoration of transparency, and to approve the regularity of the electoral process for the presidential election of 2022”. A measure considered unconstitutional by many jurists. In practice, that means the intention would have been to nullify the election of Lula, who beat far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro by a narrow margin on Oct. 30.
According to Folha de S. Paulo, which revealed the scandal, this draft could be the first irrefutable piece of evidence that the entourage of Jair Bolsonaro was preparing a coup in the event of defeat. The presidential decree – which never saw the light of day – provided for the creation of a “electoral regulatory commission” to replace the TSE, headed by a majority of members from the Ministry of Defense (8 out of 17). The document is not dated, but the name of Jair Bolsonaro is at the end, on a space provided for his signature.
“While 33 million people suffered from hunger, they were preparing a coup”left-wing senator Randolfe Rodrigues, leader of the parliamentary bloc of the Lula government in the upper house, tweeted on Friday. “It shows that what we saw on January 8 [l’invasion des lieux de pouvoir à Brasilia] was not an isolated act. [Le projet de décret] is one of the links in a putschist chain”Flavio Dino had already declared on Thursday evening.
A document “out of context”
Federal police told Agence France-Presse they could not comment on an ongoing investigation. Mr. Torres, who is in the United States, said on Thursday evening on Twitter that this draft was “probably in a pile of documents supposed to be destroyed in due course”. According to him, its content was not supposed to be disclosed and is judged “out of context”.
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Mr. Torres was already on American soil when several thousand Bolsonarians invaded and ransacked the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court in the Brazilian capital on Sunday. The former minister had held the position of head of security for the federal district of Brasilia since January 2, but he had gone on vacation just after his appointment.
Brazilian news was also marked by other embarrassing revelations about Jair Bolsonaro’s mandate: incredible expenses with the presidential credit card, such as the 20,000 euros disbursed in one go in a modest restaurant in northern Brazil or the 10,000 euros in a bakery the day after his son’s wedding. Account statements of the presidential credit card for the period of his term (2019-2022) were published on an official website of the Lula government, which began to lift a hundred-year secrecy imposed by his predecessor on thousands of official documents.