FHC gets tangled up while "explaining" the coup to intellectuals and faces protests.

The coup plotters are already beginning to pay the price for participating in the collective rape of Brazilian democracy. One of the most hardened coup plotters – and one who thinks he's the smartest – has just glimpsed the irreparable damage he caused to his own biography – yet another one – by working towards the coup against Dilma Rousseff.

Former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's maneuvers to usurp the presidency and his support for Michel Temer's illegitimate government cost him his participation in the most important academic symposium on Latin America, which just took place in New York.

This is a conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). FHC would participate in the main event of the meeting, a debate on Saturday morning (28) with former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, which would close the 34th International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, on the 50th anniversary of the entity.

In a letter sent to the entity on Friday (27), FHC tried to reject accusations that President Dilma Rousseff is the victim of a coup of which he was one of the main orchestrators. And, dissatisfied with the repudiation of his actions, he vociferated that “the current ideological winds circulating in certain academic centers seem to mix the posture of scientists with that of activists”.

Verbose, the coup-plotting toucan didn't stop there:

"Those who know me are aware that I was trained as a social scientist at a time when, regardless of beliefs and values, intellectuals were expected to maintain scientific objectivity as a central value in their academic endeavors."

FHC still tried the old story that he was forcibly retired from USP by the 1964 military coup before fleeing Brazil – while many stayed and fought against the dictatorship – but the protest against him happened anyway.

Watch the video below of the protest against FHC in New York this Saturday.

In attempting to explain to academics why he orchestrated the coup, FHC lied, saying that the process of removing Dilma cannot be classified as a coup since, according to him, the Constitution was respected and the process was overseen by the STF (Supreme Federal Court).

In his letter of explanation, the politician from the PSDB party starts lying blatantly, saying that "the backdrop to the impeachment process was the revelation of a criminal organization that has existed since the mandate of the previous president [Lula], which united businessmen, public servants, politicians and political parties with the objective of increasing the cost of public works and diverting part of the resources as a strategy to gain political support, votes and, eventually, personal wealth."

Well-informed people know that the corruption scheme at Petrobras goes back a long way, to the government of FHC himself, according to whistleblowers such as former supply director Paulo Roberto Costa.

To "explain" the impeachment, FHC alluded to a "widespread corruption network," mentioning the economic crisis, the 11 million unemployed, and the growing public debt as reasons for the impeachment.

FHC confuses an audience of hundreds of well-informed and prepared intellectuals with the imbeciles who read Veja magazine and think they are informed. In "justifying" the coup, the former president attributed blame to Dilma that she did not bear, such as when talking about corruption at Petrobras, and used the rise in unemployment as a reason for the impeachment…

The information that FHC believes high unemployment justifies impeachment is shocking to anyone who doesn't have serious memory problems or (if very young) hasn't dropped out of school, since during his presidency unemployment was much higher than it is today.

In attempting to explain to academia why he plotted and helped carry out a coup d'état, FHC committed a demoralizing Freudian slip. He alluded to corruption at Petrobras despite Dilma's lack of involvement and cited problems in the economy (smaller than during the Cardoso administration), but he did not once mention the reason given by the coup plotters for removing Dilma from office.

The "official" reason for Dilma's removal, the so-called "fiscal irresponsibility," is never cited by the coup plotters because they know it's not an acceptable reason to remove a legitimately elected representative of the people from office.

FHC quickly realized he wouldn't be able to fool the intellectuals and cancelled his participation in the event.

In response, organizations like CLACSO (Latin American Council of Social Sciences) planned a protest against FHC's participation. They distributed T-shirts with the slogans "Brazil, Democracy in Mourning" and "No to the Coup" – the latter slogan also appears in English and Spanish.

“We respect Lasa’s decision to invite one of the biggest instigators and supporters of the coup in Brazil, but we also call for people to attend the conference by filling the auditorium with black t-shirts as a sign of protest,” says a call to action from the Latin American organization, included on the organization’s website.

A petition signed by 162 members of the Latin American organization and 337 non-affiliated researchers requested the cancellation of FHC's conference.

According to the researchers, by giving FHC a voice, the organization may be showing "gross disrespect to researchers who have long fought to establish democratic stability in the region, both in the present day and over the last 50 years."

Leandro Morgenfeld, a member of CLACSO and one of the organizers of the event, told Folha that the organization opposes FHC's participation in the event because he "was one of the main orchestrators of the coup against the ousted president Dilma." He also said that "it's absurd" to invite him to speak at a debate about democracy.

This is just the beginning. FHC and other coup plotters like him will end their days having to explain their participation in the collective rape of Brazilian democracy perpetrated by corrupt individuals who removed the honest president to protect themselves from the police.