Revelations of the coup attributed to (PL) in 2022 reopened a crisis between the then president’s group and the Army High Command, already dealing with the image damage of seeing general officers arrested and accused of conspiracy.
At the center of the confusion is the former Chief of Staff of the Army, General Valério Stumpf, who alongside the current commander of the Force, Tomás Ribeiro Paiva, and (then military chief of the Northeast), is appointed as one of the leaders of the resistance of the olive dome to the coup.
According to Metrópoles on Sunday (1st), Stumpf was identified in WhatsApp conversations between military coup plotters as an informant for the Supreme Court minister.
In the conversation, handed over to the police by Bolsonaro’s former aide-de-camp Mauro Cid, unidentified people say that, in a given meeting, “there was an informant from the egg [um emoji, no caso, associado à calva de Moraes] back and forth [sic]” and they say it was “General Stumph [sic]”.
The information was quickly replicated by websites linked to Bolsonarism and began to circulate on the group’s networks, which are heavily frequented by military personnel. This angered the Army High Command.
The ammunition against Stumpf, in posts by commentator Paulo Figueiredo, close to Bolsonarism. The general came to be called a traitor and “watermelon”, green on the outside (military) and red on the inside (communist, in the fantasy of the Bolsonarists), along with Tomás, Richard and the then commander Marco Antônio Freire Gomes.
Now, he has become “Moraes’ informant” on these networks. To interlocutors, throughout this crisis, Stumpf always reiterated that he was against any but did not speak publicly on the topic. While in reserve, he now heads Poupex, an organization that offers credit, savings and financing services to military personnel.
Some of his allies, however, identified the conclusion made by the Bolsonarists. The General Staff was responsible for interlocution between the Force and the General Secretariat of the (Superior Electoral Court), which was commanded by Moraes in the 2022 election.
In this role, Stumpf was at the forefront of a proposal approved by the TSE Electronic Voting Inspection Commission. On September 19 of that year, the agency adopted biometrics in the ballot box integrity test, following a suggestion from the military.
The continuity of the crisis bothers the High Command of the .
Not that they have changed their methods or, in the free association made by Bolsonarism, the president (). But the criticisms that were usually open to the minister and the president are now only heard in private conversations with the military leadership.
The emergence of details of the coup plot put the military back in the spotlight. Of the 37 indicted by the PF, 25 wore uniforms and 7 wore general officer stars on their shoulders. The olive green DNA of the conspiracy by the Minister of Defense, José Múcio Monteiro, and the military commanders, in particular General Tomás.
Since the beginning of the Lula government, inaugurated under the turmoil of January 8 and 2019, they have tried to isolate the barracks from political confusion. This is put to the test by the reality of police news, a part of the officers and troops to the Bolsonarist ideology, and by topics such as the retirement of uniforms.
The legalism that prevailed and that of the then Air Force commander, Brigadier Baptista Júnior, in participating in the conspiracy is always remembered by Múcio’s allies and those who rejected the coup. Of the then senior military leaders, only Admiral Almir Garnier, who commanded the Navy, was indicted for supporting the movement.
Critics point out, however, that the generals with knowledge of the plot should have gone public to denounce it. In the initial PF report, but its status has been updated.
