Lula cancels trip and calls in military commanders after revealing superior officer’s involvement in coup plan

On a busy day of political unrest in Brasilia, President Lula da Silva canceled a last-minute trip this Friday to two states in central-western and northern Brazil and called the defense secretary to an emergency meeting. , José Musio Monteiro and the commander-in-chief of the army, General Tomás Miguel Ribeiro Paiva. The topic that prompted the cancellation and the meeting was a Veja magazine report coming out this weekend about the involvement of an Army General Staff officer in a plan hatched last December to prevent the inauguration of the then president. -elect Lula da Silva and keep Jair Bolsonaro in power, who lost the presidential election.

The existence of a conspiracy of people very close to Jair Bolsonaro, including retired or active military personnel holding political positions in the government, to stage a coup d’état is nothing new. morning PostFor example, as early as May 5, Bolsonaro’s adjutant, acting lieutenant colonel Mauro Cid, was moving ahead in preparing this democratic break. The novelty now put forward by the magazine, and which caused such a stir in Brazil, was the revelation of the involvement in this conspiracy of another high-ranking officer in active service in the army and who occupied a place in the General Staff, Colonel Jean Lovan the Younger. , who in messages revealed by the publication is pressuring Sid to speed up the launch of the coup in order to “save” Brazil from Lula.

Lowand, a soldier with a distinguished career in the Armed Forces, continues to this day to sit at meetings of the Armaments High Command as coordinator of the Army Special Projects Office, and was recently appointed to an important position. in Washington, USA, as a representative of Brazil in a project related to missiles, in his specialty. This caused Lula great apprehension and annoyance and made him decide to cancel all his meetings this Friday and call Musio and Thomas Paive.

The Minister and the General, who were participating in the military event in Brasilia, as soon as they were called, left in a hurry before one o’clock and went to meet with Lula, with whom they talked for more than an hour and a half. Lula, very agitated, demanded strong and urgent action against Lavender, whom he considered a great danger to the stability of the armed forces and democracy due to the high level at which he operates in the army.

In response to the head of state’s order, the first measure was announced a few hours later by the army, usually very reserved and slow in punishing officers, the annulment of the appointment of a colonel to the US post. Late this Friday, early evening in Lisbon, messages exchanged advocating a coup d’état encourage the military to revolt against the generals of the army’s high command unless they stick to the project of turning Bolsonaro into a dictator and keeping him in power indefinitely.