BRASÍLIA: Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro, the outgoing far-right president, had been camping outside the headquarters of the Brazilian army for ten weeks, pleading with the military to overturn the election for president in October. In addition, the government resisted the protesters little over the past ten weeks.
The camp's inhabitants then stormed Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidential offices on Sunday, joining hundreds of other protesters who had left their tents in Brasilia, the nation's capital.
By Monday morning, the encampment had been thoroughly swept by authorities. They removed banners, tore down tents, and held 1,200 protesters before transporting them in buses to be questioned. Officials were debating a larger set of concerns on Monday, including the following:
How did protests get so close to Brazil's power centers? Additionally, why had the security forces been outnumbered in such a way that crowds of protesters were able to easily enter official government buildings?
According to Flávio Dino, Brazil's justice minister, various security agencies met on Friday to prepare for the possibility of violence during the planned Sunday protests. However, he stated that the security plan developed in that meeting, which included preventing protesters from entering the main government buildings, was at least partially abandoned on Sunday, and there were significantly fewer law enforcement personnel than anticipated.
He added, "The police contingent was not what had been agreed upon," and that the reason why plans had changed was unclear.
Some members of the federal government laid the blame on Ibaneis Rocha, the governor of Brazil, and his deputies, suggesting that they had either been negligent or complicit in understaffing the protest security forces.
Rocha was removed from his position as governor late Sunday night by Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes for at least 90 days.
Whatever security flaws may have occurred, the riot on Sunday revealed shockingly the primary obstacle facing Brazil's democracy. The attacks on Sunday, in contrast to other attempts to topple governments throughout the history of Latin America, were not ordered by a single strongman ruler or a military force intent on assuming power; rather, they were fueled by a threat that was more subtle and deeply rooted: massive naivete
Despite expert audits and analyses concluding otherwise, millions of Brazilians appear to be convinced that Bolsonaro won the presidential election in October.