Lula and Bolsonaro trade jibes over rioting that shook Brazil

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro have traded accusations about the violence that followed Lula’s inauguration a year ago, in a sign of persistent divisions in Latin America’s largest democracy.

Lula, a 78-year-old former trade unionist who previously ruled Brazil between 2003 and 2010, accused the far-right Bolsonaro of being behind the attacks on government buildings by his supporters.

“I believe there is someone directly responsible, who planned all of this and who, cowardly, hid and left Brazil in advance, who was the former president,” Lula told the Metrópoles website in an interview on Friday, without mentioning Bolsonaro’s name.

The rightwinger, a former army captain who has exalted Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship that ended in 1985, was not present in the country at the time of the attacks, having travelled to Florida to avoid Lula’s swearing-in. 

Bolsonaro — who argued the nation’s electronic voting system was vulnerable to manipulation, without offering solid evidence — has since been barred from running for office until 2030 due to campaign violations and faces a host of other legal probes from his time in office. 

The 68-year-old hit back over the weekend, saying he regretted the events of January 8. But he denied they amounted to a coup attempt and alleged a “trap by the left”. Some within his conservative movement have claimed there was infiltration by leftwing activists.

“This has never been the behaviour of people on our side, people on the right wing,” Bolsonaro told CNN Brasil. He described custodial sentences of up to 17 years given to those already found guilty as “absurd”.

The disturbances carried echoes of the Capitol invasion in Washington DC almost exactly two years earlier by supporters of former US president Donald Trump, who was idolised by Bolsonaro and made allegations of electoral fraud in the wake of his own defeat.  

In Brasília on January 8 2023, thousands of rightwing protesters clad in the national colours of yellow and green invaded the supreme court, presidential palace and Congress, alleging without proof that Lula’s election was rigged and calling for the armed forces to overturn the result.

The disturbances occurred a week after the left winger’s inauguration for a third non-consecutive term, following his narrow victory over Bolsonaro in a highly polarised presidential race. 

Television footage of violent trespass and property damage inside official premises grabbed international attention. Law enforcement agents quickly quelled the riots, which Lula called an “coup attempt”, with more than a thousand suspects arrested in the aftermath.

A cabinet minister in charge of security was later forced to resign, after CCTV footage showed him greeting intruders inside the presidential palace. 

Thirty people have been convicted of crimes related to the episode, with another 170-odd judgments expected in the coming months. Police on Monday morning executed 46 search and seizure warrants and one arrest as part of an operation to find financiers of the criminal acts. 

An official ceremony was due to take place on Monday afternoon in Brasília to commemorate the events, with speeches expected from Lula and supreme court justices. 

Despite the restoration of institutional stability by Lula’s government following the riots, political polarisation has not gone away, according to Marina Pontes at the consultancy Prospectiva.

“The commemoration of the events perpetuates this situation, a fact contrary to the government of unity that Lula wanted in 2023,” she said, adding that the Lula-versus-Bolsonaro dynamic would probably continue to be played out in municipal elections later this year.

The centre-left politician remains a divisive figure. He was previously jailed for almost two years on corruption convictions that were later overturned, paving the way for his political comeback. 

Additional reporting by Beatriz Langella