ETA according to this news site, the inner circle of Mr. Bolsonaro is afraid of what Mr. Torres could say to the authorities.
I think it is one of the reasons Mr. Lula is trying to change the strutucture of the security forces.
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This expense sheet that was revealed today has such strange expenses. He spent thousands of Reais in humble neighborhood restaurants and bakeries. In one of these establishments, he spent R$ 57,000.00 on the same day. What is strange is that he spent it on 6 purchases of R$ 9,500.00.
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There wouldn’t happen to be an R$10,000 reporting limit would there?
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I am not sure. But I think it only applies to other financial operations. The brazilian banks are obligated to report suspicious transactions over R$ 10.000,00 to the Council for Financial Activities Control. He spent, for example, R$ 44.000,00 in a single purchase in a gas station in Guaruja, a town in São Paulo shore, 1087 km from Brasilia, but it didn´t raised red flags.
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From some articles, it seems that there were several individuals who used the corporate cards.
Maybe some believe there is a 10 k reporting limit, and made several lower transactions, while other don’t believe/know that and made higher transactions.
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Luciano Hang, a hardline Bolsonarista entrepreneur who used to wear yellow and Green suits to signal loyalty to the former president, now changed His mind and says we must respect Mr. Lula. The Brazilian memesphere didn’t forgive Him and painted His infamous suit red.
ETA link
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Sounds like your government is actually taking this seriously, and doing what they need to do to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.
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I guess there’s loads to be said for having been there and done that, nobody can say “it couldn’t happen here” when it has, in living memory.
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I’m sure that helps, of course, but things very much could have gone the other way if the military had lined up behind Bolsnaro. I think that the majority of Brazillians not wanting to relive the last dictatorship helped, but I’m sure there are people who are still also nostalgic for that era (as I think our friend @BakaNeko has mentioned, maybe?).
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Oh, there are people who are nostalgic for the military dictatorship in the US, even though it has never existed.
My hope is that the military is a pretty good cross section of the majority of Brazilians, enough of them either know, or have family who do, and they would not chose a dictatorship.
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I think they’re really nostalgic for segregation and a time when women had far less rights than we do now. They’ll support a military dictatorship if it brings that stuff back…
I don’t know much about the make up of the Brazilian military… here in the US, I do know that the leadership takes the concept of defending the Constitution, not deploying domestically, and civilian leadership of the military very seriously. They pound that into their heads at the top institutions that produce the top brass. There were certainly some in the military who were sympathetic to Trump, etc, but it was by no means a majority.
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Including Bolsonaro and many of his supporters.
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In the NYT article from 1993, it was Peru’s dictator he was admiring, so as a member of congress he advocated for it to be shut down.
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According to a poll, nobody wants a dictatorship.
But what is strange, there are some people around here are just asking for a dictatorship. Maybe these people don’t have a dictionary at home and don’t know what the definition of a dictatorship is. Or maybe these are the people who voted for the face-eating leopards party.
ETA links
The problem is that a dictatorship is not like a salad bar. You can’t choose what you put on your plate. If you ask for a dictatorship, you’ll get everything, not just the parts you think are good.
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That’s good to hear! I worry about the folks up here, who seem to be okay with that kind of thing, but as noted above, they’ve never experienced living in a dictatorship, and that’s lived memory for Brazilians.
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Something on his claims about that draft, here.
Mr. Torres’s lawyer said he didn’t pen the draft. Instead, he claims the former cabinet minister was given the document by citizens. “Every day, someone would hand him a proposal for a coup, a state of emergency. That was never taken to the president.”
Still in the U.S., Mr. Torres reacted to the report on Twitter:
“In my house there was a pile of documents to be discarded, where most likely the material described in the article was found. Everything would be taken to be shredded in due course at the Justice Ministry. The said document was taken when I was not there and leaked out of context, helping to fuel fallacious narratives against me. We were the first ministry to deliver management reports for the transition. I respect Brazilian democracy. I have a clear conscience regarding my role as minister.”
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“If anyone asks, we can say that some nutter sent it to me.”
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