The president (PT) sought to neutralize the attacks of his main opponent in the October election, the senator (-RJ), by stating that for Brazilian communities.
Lula reacted this Friday (29) by classifying the (Primeiro Comando da Capital) and the (Comando Vermelho) as terrorist organizations. When speaking, he stated that the factions “are terrorists for Brazilian communities, for Brazilian society, for the people on the periphery of this country.”
The use of these terms is based on the perspective that for the population, especially low-income people, terror is already practiced. The government could be accused of defending criminals if it simply claimed that these factions do not fit into the classic concept of a terrorist organization.
With this reading, on Thursday night (28), after announcing the American classification, Lula warned his assistants that he would declare that the PCC and CV are terrorists for the poor and that they are being fought internally. He also accused Flávio Bolsonaro of treason, which he repeated publicly the following day.
According to reports, the president said he could not remain silent about the senator’s trip to the USA to ask Trump for intervention in the country.
Members of Flávio’s pre-campaign state that, for now, the repercussion for the senator has been positive on social media. A parliamentarian interviewed under reserve says that it will be necessary to understand, however, whether the government will be able to sustain this speech and reverse the positive tide for Flávio in the coming days.
The senator’s political group expected the government to defend its position against classifying the factions as terrorists so that they could affirm that Lula defends criminals. The president criticized the classification made by the , but tried not to leave this flank open for attacks.
“This Comando Vermelho and this PCC are terrorists for Brazilian communities, for Brazilian society. For the people on the outskirts of this country they are terrorists,” he said in a speech in Sergipe this Friday (29). “They are terrorists and we are going to fight here,” he said.
The Brazilian president then differentiated between terrorizing the population and practicing what is traditionally identified by experts as terrorism. In his speech, he cited the President of the United States, .
“They are not the terrorists that Trump wants. Trump wants Osama Bin Laden”, declared Lula.
Bin Laden, killed in 2011 by American forces, was the leader of Al Qaeda, the organization responsible for the attack on the twin towers in New York in 2001.
Lula’s speech surprised PT leaders involved with the party’s campaigns heard by the Sheet. They imagined that the president would have total focus on the speech of national sovereignty. There are doubts among PT members about how to maintain the discourse that the factions are terrorists and at the same time criticize Trump’s decision.
Still trying to avoid pitfalls, an excerpt from Lula’s speech opened the door for criticism from Bolsonarists. On Friday night, Flávio released a video in which he tried to associate a speech in which the president referred to Brazilian factions as “our criminals” with the defense of criminals.
“I am very sad today with the news that the Secretary of the United States of North America, a certain Marco Rubio, said that our criminals are terrorists and that the Americans can intervene,” said Lula, before referring to the factions as terrorists.
Flávio explored this part of the speech, in which the president also says he is “sad” by the Americans’ decision to attack the PT member on social media.
“Have you ever seen a president of the Republic treat members of the PCC and Comando Vermelho as ‘our criminals’?” said Flávio.
“‘Our criminals, Lula? No, you criminals. The sovereignty that we defend is the sovereignty of the Brazilian people, it is the sovereignty of the 50 million people who live under the rule of narco-terrorists.”
The American government had been studying the possibility of declaring the two Brazilian factions as terrorists for months. Brazilian authorities assess that this opens up an opening for US interventions in Brazil. Experts say the classification could .
The classification of the two factions as terrorists was announced on Thursday. In previous days, Flávio Bolsonaro was with Donald Trump and other United States authorities. At meetings, he defended the measure.
