President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is keenly aware that this year’s September 7 independence celebration will be the first major civic event in Brazil’s capital since the January 8 Brasília riots, in which a few thousand supporters of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro ransacked the buildings housing all three branches of government.
Lula’s administration also plans to use the event to whitewash the military’s crucial role in plotting a coup against him.
Officially, the government hopes to wrestle the celebration away from supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro, who hijacked the date in both 2021 and 2022 for the former president’s putschist platform.
On Independence Day in 2021, Mr. Bolsonaro called Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes a “scoundrel,” and falsely claimed that he would soon convene a meeting of the Council of the Republic, which is responsible for advising the president before he decides whether to request a state of siege — a situation in which constitutional guarantees are suspended and the president is granted emergency powers. A similar instrument was planned to be used in late 2022 to overturn the election results, according to a draft decree found by Federal Police in the home of former Justice Minister Anderson Torres.
The Lula administration stated that its plan is to bring the celebration “closer to the general public, to civil society.” Planes, tanks, radars, and anti-aircraft artillery will be on display in an open-air exhibition near where the traditional military parade will take place.
“What we want to do now, with the participation of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, is to make the party belong to everyone again,” Lula said in an interview with a government-owned TV station.
This is a different stance from the one Lula took earlier this year. Days after the January 8 riots, the president said he was “convinced” that the doors of the presidential palace had been opened to let the demonstrators in. He later launched a personnel purge.
Lula dismissed military service members from positions related to the security of presidential facilities; moved Brazil’s intelligence agency from under the military-run Institutional Security Office (GSI) to the purview of the Office of the Chief of Staff; fired the heads of the Federal Highway Police (PRF) in all 27 Brazilian states, and fired the Army commander.
Initially opposed to a select congressional committee to investigate the riots, Lula later changed his mind, and his administration successfully obtained a majority of the inquiry’s seats. Lawmakers allied to the president have very clearly stated their purpose of indicting Mr. Bolsonaro for the attempted coup.
Lula, however, has ceased firing at the military. He only dismissed General Gonçalves Dias, the head of the GSI, after surveillance footage leaked by CNN Brasil in April showed him inside the presidential palace on January 8, with an apparently friendly behavior toward the vandals. He also never fired his Defense Minister, José Múcio.
On January 2, shortly after taking office and days before the riots, Mr. Múcio said that he himself had relatives in the protest camps nearby military facilities, but argued that they were simply a “manifestation of democracy.” He...
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