Lula’s administration is in a state of perpetual trouble. While the Brazilian president travelled around the world – ‘parroting Russian and Chinese talking points’, according to the Biden administration – his government saw a supermajority in the House of Congress form against him, and today lost his most trusted military adviser, chief of his Institutional Security Bureau (GSI).
Gonçalves Dias resignation is the first step as the truth about the January 8th riots comes to light, and the participation of administration officials in enabling it.
“The top national security adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva resigned on Wednesday, the presidential palace said, amid a scandal related to the aide’s presence during the storming of government buildings in the capital.
The resignation of Marcos Gonçalves Dias, already accepted by the president, follows a report from CNN Brasil that included [CCTV] footage of him walking around the presidential palace while a mob ransacked government buildings in Brasilia on January 8.”
Ever since his highly contested presidential election last year, Lula has relied heavily on the retired army general Gonçalves Dias, making him the head of Brazil’s Institutional Security Bureau (GSI), advising the president on defense and security matters, and handling presidential security.
Lula and Dias have a long and trusting relationship, but his explanations found no echo with Lula Ministers, who have called the 8 January uprising ‘a botched coup attempt designed to reinstall Bolsonaro as president’.
“On Wednesday afternoon, less than four months after the leftist veteran took power, Dias was forced from his job after a television network broadcast leaked CCTV images in which he could be seen roaming the corridors of Brasília’s Planalto Palace as radical supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro rampaged through that building, the supreme court and congress.
[…] As well as images of Gen Dias, the leaked footage included scenes that showed GSI agents greeting the pro-Bolsonaro extremists and serving them water as they carried out their attack.”
After the images were broadcast, Lula summoned several top ministers, including Dias, to a meeting at which his fate was sealed.
Now it’s expected that Congress will press on with the investigations on the January 8th riots, something that Lula wants to avoid at any cost.
