A Nova Democracia: Weekly Editorial – Armed Forces and government owe explanations about 8th January

Gonçalves Dias, former Minister of the GSI in Lula’s government, near the Planalto Palace during January 8th. Photo: Reproduction

We publish this unofficial translation of the Weekly Editorial of the newspaper A Nova Democracia:

The new released images exclusively about the second bolsonarada, on January 8, will produce a curious result. Simultaneously, two distinct forces will suffer by their release: the Armed Forces High Command, fearing next investigations that will reveal even more evidence, already abundant, of its responsibility in that assault; and the government itself, which blocked in every way the establishment of the CPMI of January 8, producing in public opinion suspicions being those who have something to hide.

The new images are scandalous. General Gonçalves Dias, head of the Office of Institutional Security (GSI) – an agency made to avoid, precisely, an attack on the headquarters of the branches of government -, is caught in the building assisting the green chickens finding emergency exits during the siege of the invaders. The general and an Army major (José Eduardo Natale de Paula Pereira) then assigned to the GSI are caught talking to the coupists.

Major Natale, in particular, did not restrain himself in his impetus of courtesy and even served water, greeted and chatted with the anti-communist mob. While the coup plotters of the highest order exude kindness toward the fascist horde, the latter destroys everything in its path.

Additionally to this, there are more suspicious events, such as the dismissal of 36 soldiers from the Presidential Guard Battalion (BGP) 20 hours before the event, leaving a small contingent carrying weapons of war, such as assault rifles, all under orders from General G. Dias himself, despite warnings from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin). Also, the very serious episode in which the Military Commander of the Planalto refused to dismantle the camp in front of the Army Headquarters, in Brasilia, and even threatened the intervenor then appointed by Luiz Inácio and the General Commander of the Military Police of the Federal District: “I think I have a little more troops than you do, don’t you, Colonel?”

Undeniably, the hosts of the Bolsonarist green chickens were used by the Armed Forces High Command to promote the rioting and to send a message to the new government about who is really in charge; the generals maneuvered both with permission and help in setting up and maintaining the encampments, as well as with ambiguous and permissive statements questioning the election results. These facts became political fuel for the far right, whose obstinate leader, after losing the internal dispute in the High Command for preventing the elected president from taking office, harbored hopes that, with the chaos, he would impose on the same High Command a tug-of-war for unleashing, once and for all, total military intervention. Only fools and goofs can believe that these were punctual insubordinations, or even, alterable with simple changes in positions. And did President Luiz Inácio, then, act like a fool or a fox, a fool or a rogue? The fact is that such action by the High Command is the necessary result of its military intervention, set in motion in 2015 and advancing by successive approaches and apparent retreats, depending on the gravity of the general crisis of the old state, bureaucratic capitalism and imperialism, as well as by the danger of popular uprising.

On the other hand, why did the government, which had been hit in this episode, vehemently refuse to investigate what had happened? In the first place, it is strange that the government has not made any serious and thorough preparations to defend itself from that attack, since it received systematic warnings from Abin – warnings directed even to Flávio Dino, today the most ‘radical’ in his words against the coup plotters, because in attitude, what he could have done to prevent the occurrence, he did not do. Why? Would he prevaricated against the invasion to try to ‘burn’ Bolsonarism and the generals in public opinion? If so, he is dangerously underestimating the gravity of the national and international political situation, trusting that a coup d’état is not possible under present conditions. If it persists in this way, the government will fall off the horse sooner than it thinks. And why hasn’t it encouraged investigations? To appease the generals and, therefore, their guardianship over the government? The nation still needs explanations, is entitled to them and demands them.

The historical epoch in which we live is not of democracy and world peace, but of tendency to violence and reaction all along the line, as a reflection of the general crisis of decomposition of imperialism, its terminal state that only leads to wars, misery, disease and suffering for mankind. Like a wounded beast, reaction is already struggling in violent internal struggles to save its system of exploitation through a redistribution of the world that points to a new and third war, attacking democratic liberties, either by gradually eliminating them in the “democratic” regime or by denying them through fascism. The coup-plotting generals and Bolsonarism are two expressions of this clash in our country, with which – in the last instance – the “democrats” of the moment conciliate, because they share the same class interests. The defense of democratic rights falls onto the shoulders of the revolutionary classes, especially workers, peasants and urban petty bourgeoisie. More than ever, the words of the great Dimitrov are valid: “We are supporters of Soviet democracy, the workers’ democracy, the most consistent democracy in the world. But we defend and will continue to defend in the capitalist countries, inch by inch, bourgeois democratic liberties, which fascism and bourgeois reaction attack, because the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat demands it.”

Only the revolutionary uprising of the people’s masses can stop fascism; only democratic revolution that puts an end to this rotten system of exploitation and oppression by the big bourgeois and landowners, servants of imperialism, mainly North American (Yankee), can conquer and assure the New Democracy and the New Brazil.

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