Sao Paulo. General Walter Braga Netto was in the news twice this Friday (1st), both related to the October elections. First, with the release of military speeches to businessmen, to whom he would repeat boss Jair Bolsonaro’s mantra that without vote auditing, “there will be no elections,” according to Malu Gaspar, a journalist from the globe. The threat would have been made on Friday (24) and would have “embarrassed” the leaders present.

The general was also mentioned in the media for officially leaving the presidential administration, where he had been since his dismissal from the Ministry of Defense in March. He is expected to become vice-president on Bolsonaro’s list in the October elections and will be one of the campaign coordinators along with his “zero 1” son Senator Flavio Bolsonaro (PL-RJ).

Braga Netto’s new threat, though denied on the grounds that it was taken out of context, is just one of countless since 2019, uttered mostly by the head of government. Bolsonaro upped the ante last Saturday. At a religious event in Balneario Camboriu (South Carolina), he said that his “army is approaching 200 million people.” He promised that “if necessary – and it increasingly seems that it will be necessary – we will make the decisions that need to be taken.”

Is Bolsonaro constantly bluffing, threatening with power he doesn’t have? Is there a risk that former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, if the current inhabitants of the Planalto Palace win the election, will refuse to transfer power, repeating Donald Trump’s coup attempt in the United States on January 6, 2021?

For political scientist Joao Roberto Martins Filho, retired professor at the Federal University of San Carlos (Ufskar), the situation of uncertainty that such speeches instill in society is largely due to the silence of the military, who allegedly would be against these anti-democratic outbursts, but are silent. “People don’t know what’s going on. They are not calming the country and will not be calming in the near future,” he says. “Surprise is part of military strategy.”

Read Mārtiņš Filju’s RBA interview:

Are threats to the elections coming from Bolsonaro or close allies and the military like Braga Netto bravado or is there a real coup risk?

From the lips of the general who occupied the Ministry of Defense, seriously. The problem is that we don’t know what kind of support (coup attempt) the high command will have, especially in the army. Bolsonaro will appoint Braga Netto as his deputy with ulterior motives in order to have an army figure on the list. But among those soldiers who would not be as loyal to Bolsonaro as Braga Netto, someone who may have some doubts about the possibility of a coup, no one shows himself.

When it’s against the Federal Supreme Court, then they show up. Then the Minister of DefensePaulo Sergio Nogueira de Oliveira), the rest of the commanders – which is unusual – are signed together. When Siro Gomes said that the military was pandering to organized crime in the Amazon, three commanders joined him. Such statements (of the military) can be considered offensive to the armed forces, as they pose a threat to Brazilian democracy.

So, this game is a bit strange, but dangerous. It looks like they want to delay the country until the elections. Be the ones who are directly dedicated, (Augusto) Heleno, (Luis Eduardo) Ramos and Braga Netto, or the ones who occasionally send a few questionable messages.

Where are the soldiers of the Armed Forces who should be against Bolsonaro but never speak out in public?

According to sources, there were signals from the military zone that they were not going to interfere (in a coup d’etat), which is very dangerous for order, national security … But it was clear why they sent this message: because of this statement by Braga Netto, who is already trying to delegitimize the elections. But there is such a bad climate in which we do not know what is happening. And we have reason to believe that they can create problems because they turn on Bolsonaro.

It occurred to me that they find Bolsonaro’s game very dangerous. But how do you know if this is true or a game of two tweezers, because. Piero Leirner says (“to act as a group sympathetic to a social movement, and then as a defender of the government” – according to Leirner). On the one hand, the threat of a threat, on the other, that “we will abide by the Constitution.”

If Lula wins the election, Bolsonaro will have two months to remain on the plateau and attempt a coup d’état similar to that of Donald Trump in the United States. How do you see this range?

And the role that the Army plays here has nothing to do with the Army where it actually exists to wage war. But I think you are even optimistic when you think about the situation after Lula’s victory, between the victory and the inauguration. Until then, we have three very difficult months.

On the one hand, it may even be that if Bolsonaro starts to add fuel to the fire, as he did in Santa Catarina, the active duty military will stop Bolsonaro. How would they stop? Revealing some information they have on him, something straight forward. They have a lot of information. In this sense, they will drop the “bomb” in time to damage Bolsonaro’s candidacy. But this is a step before Election Day.

Then, with Lula’s victory, we still have the opportunity to take office. But then, with an elected president, with a large number of votes, with international support, it is more difficult to deal with him. Perhaps then Bolsonaro will try to do something crazy, like Trump.

But in the event that he blows everything up, the Armed Forces can respond to the request of the Supreme Court and bring troops to the streets to defend democracy. Further, it gets even worse: a situation has developed when Lula has not even taken office yet, but already owes something to the Armed Forces.

But wouldn’t this forecast be somewhat optimistic, since it represents an intervention to defend democracy?

Is it in quotation marks? Because they created this situation. The situation is not good. There are no optimistic views on this from my side.

It remains to be seen whether the Armed Forces, as an organism, something more than a government, but as a state, will continue to collude with a government that has complaints every day. Ministry of Education, now Caixa Econômica…

Inside the house, the women should tell them, “How far will this go?” As you said at the beginning: they are not going to do anything? They won’t show up? Are you going to make a little statement about how this is too much? Not yet, because candidate Lula, who is their main enemy, is winning.

So let’s hope they are reasonable and Brazil is not a “banana republic”…

I totally agree. The problem is that we remain in this tension, and suspense is part of the military strategy. We don’t know what’s going on. They do not calm the country and will not calm in the near future. The other day, a supporter of Bolsonaro, commenting on the speech in Santa Catarina, said that Bolsonaro has the Armed Forces and “auxiliary forces.”

But he put in the “auxiliary forces” what – hunters, shooters and weapons collectors. Are these guys a support force? Auxiliary force – military police. These guys are not part of the state. Look at the danger we’re approaching.

In short, he armed people and no one knows what might happen.

What can happen, and I hope it doesn’t happen, like you, is that people will die until the situation is resolved. Look what happened in the USA.

People even died there, but the institutions here in Brazil are not as strong as they are there. We don’t know how long they will last…

I agree. So much so that we are dependent on the Armed Forces. Complete nonsense.

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