Brazil’s attempted coup was thwarted by Lula’s decisive action, minister says | Brazil

The insurrection that shook Brazil’s capital was a well-organised coup attempt that was thwarted thanks to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s swift and firm reaction, one of the president’s top ministers has told the Guardian.

Speaking at the presidential palace on Tuesday, the minister of institutional relations, Alexandre Padilha, said he believed Sunday’s far-right assault on the three branches of Brazil’s government was “an act of terrorism” designed to bring down Lula’s week-old government.

And Padilha said the insurrection in support of the former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro might have succeeded had it not been for Lula’s decision to order a federal intervention that put his administration in charge of security in the capital, Brasília.

Ibaneis Rocha, the pro-Bolsonaro governor of the federal district which contains Brazil’s capital, was suspended from his post on Sunday night amid outrage that local security forces had failed to stop thousands of radical Bolsonaristas ransacking the presidential palace, congress and supreme court.

“If the government of the federal district had acted as agreed with the minister of defense and the minister of justice, none of what happened on Sunday would have happened,” Padilha said, denouncing what he called “terrorist attacks” on the heart of Brazilian democracy.

“Perhaps, if we hadn’t had a leader with the popular support and ability to build political bridges that President Lula enjoys … Brazilian history might have been different when it came to the attempted coup, [and] the storming of the supreme court, congress and the presidential palace,” Padilha said, noting how on Sunday free buses were laid on for Bolsonarista militants hoping to join the insurrection from different parts of the country.

The minister also praised the unity shown in the wake of the attacks by the leaders of Brazil’s supreme court, lower house and congress, and Brazil’s 27 regional governors, who gathered in the rubble-strewn plaza outside the presidential palace on Monday night in a powerful show of support for Lula’s new administration and Brazilian democracy.

“All of this was halted, it was stopped thanks to the firm response of President Lula,” and the pro-democracy consensus between political leaders of all stripes, added Padilha.

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