Mutiny in the Brazilian parliament

The Brazilian National Congress is experiencing one of its most tense weeks since the return to democracy. Since August 5, 2025, far-right parliamentarians have transformed the legislative chambers into a stage for a veritable institutional mutiny. In protest against Jair Bolsonaro's house arrest and in defense of amnesty for those involved in the coup attempts of January 8, 2023, Bolsonaro-supporting deputies and senators have physically occupied the presiding tables of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Some have even chained themselves; others have used adhesive tape over their mouths, staging a forced silence that, in reality, attempts to mask the brutal attempt to silence the judiciary and subjugate the rule of law.

The trigger for the crisis was the explicit effort to forcibly impose a vote on the so-called "peace package," which includes three main points: a broad and unrestricted amnesty for those convicted for the January 8 attacks, the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, and the end of parliamentary immunity.

This is a direct attack against the country's institutional pillars — the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the democratic system of checks and balances. Faced with this orchestrated obstruction, the Speaker of the House, Hugo Motta, and the President of the Senate, Davi Alcolumbre, decided to cancel sessions and denounce the attempt to hijack the legislative process through political blackmail.

It is crucial to understand what is at stake. The events of January 8, 2023, were not political demonstrations; they were an attempted coup d'état. Thousands of Bolsonaro supporters invaded and vandalized Congress, the Presidential Palace, and the Supreme Court, creating unprecedented scenes of destruction. The Supreme Court classified the action as terrorism. The Attorney General's Office indicted Jair Bolsonaro and others involved for attempted coup, criminal organization, and violent abolition of the democratic rule of law. The combined sentence could reach 46 years in prison. And it is precisely to avoid this outcome that the far right is now trying to rewrite history and erase the crime with legislative ink.

Political pressure has escalated in recent days. Bolsonaro supporters held a rally in Brasília, attended by leaders such as Magno Malta, Silas Malafaia, and other parliamentarians, extolling "peace" while attacking the Judiciary and demanding amnesty for the criminals of January 8th. The former president, even though prohibited from using social media, participated via videoconference. The charade, however, does not hold up to the facts: it is an attempt to impose, through the force of the parliamentary bloc and the destabilization of Parliament, a dangerous revisionism. A collective pardon that would free from justice precisely those who tried to destroy it.

Civil society has reacted. Recent polls show that more than half of the Brazilian population opposes amnesty. Legal experts point out that a legislative pardon on the eve of final sentences would put Brazil on a path of impunity similar to that which marked the end of the military dictatorship—a conciliation that sealed democracy only halfway. Today, this historical error is repeated in a new guise: conciliation with modern coup-mongering, which hides behind parliamentary blocs, pulpits, and YouTube channels, but which has never abandoned its authoritarian project of power.

The most alarming aspect, however, is that this attempted amnesty is not an isolated episode, but part of a transnational strategy by the far right. Just as, in the United States, Trump acts to undermine the judiciary and delegitimize the electoral system, in Brazil Bolsonaro and his allies rely on confusion, institutional pressure, and legislative populism as weapons to weaken investigations and escape punishment. Bolsonarism is not just a political current—it is a form of insurgency against democratic legality.

The crisis in Parliament is unprecedented. It shows that what is at stake is not just the memory of January 8th, but the future of every other day. Amnesty for the coup plotters would be the institutionalization of crime. And silence in the face of this mutiny would be the final capitulation of Brazilian democracy.