Demétrio Magnoli apologizes for supporting the coup against former President Dilma Rousseff.
However, in his mea culpa, he states that the coup was an 'impeachment', and not a coup.
247 - Columnist Demétrio Magnoli apologized on Tuesday, in his column in Folha de S. Paulo, for having supported the coup d'état against former president Dilma RousseffIn 2016, without having committed any crime, the first woman elected to preside over Brazil was overthrown so that the coup leader Michel Temer could implement the neoliberal shock of the 'bridge to the future,' a project that aimed to transfer oil revenues to minority shareholders of Petrobras and also to strip Brazilian workers of their rights. As was predictable, the 2016 coup brought back hunger and opened the doors for the rise of fascism and the far-right in Brazil.
""I wrote a column here in March 2016 entitled 'Impeachment, urgent!'. It was a change of opinion from the opposition to the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff that I had expressed since the beginning of 2015—and, clearly, a political miscalculation." Magnoli wrote"I came to see impeachment as an 'urgent' necessity because of the reactions of Rousseff and the PT leadership to the legal proceedings against Lula," he continued.
"The impeachment brought disastrous consequences. On one hand, it strengthened the Lava Jato conspirators who, with the help of a surrendered Supreme Court, imprisoned Lula and destroyed both the PSDB and the Temer government. Moro and his cronies opened the doors for Bolsonaro's rise," added Magnoli.
However, his mea culpa was not complete, since he still treats the 2016 coup d'état as an impeachment, and not as a coup d'état, even though it was carried out without tanks. "'Impeachment coup'? No: that's a clever political narrative, intended to rewrite the history of Lula's Workers' Party. The impeachment was subject to legal procedure, overseen by the Supreme Federal Court—as, incidentally, in the case of Collor. Presidents are impeached when they lose the support of the overwhelming majority of citizens and minimal support in Congress. It only doesn't work that way in dictatorships—including some led by 'comrades' on the left. Legitimate and legal, Rousseff's impeachment was a serious political mistake. I understood that at the beginning. Then, I was swept up in the whirlwind. Mea culpa," wrote Magnoli.
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