Cappelli’s agility exposes, by contrast, the general’s weakness in the GSI – 04/27/2023

Hours before Lula’s return from his trip to Portugal and Spain, Ricardo Cappelli, acting head of the Institutional Security Office, delivered the “cleaning” that the president had ordered him last Thursday, before leaving for abroad. On Wednesday, he removed 29 Bolsonarist cats that remained in the Institutional Security Cabinet tuba. This Thursday, 58 more soldiers were exonerated. Cappelli carried out in one week the functional cleaning that General Gonçalves Dias refrained from doing in three and a half months of non-operation.

Of the 29 exonerated by Cappelli on Wednesday, 24 are military, three policemen, one firefighter and one civilian. Three had commanded national secretariats since the last administration, when the GSI was headed by ultrabolsonarista general Augusto Heleno. The other 26 held leadership positions. Some survived on the GSI sheet despite having participated, like Gonçalves Dias, in the embarrassment that turned the Planalto into a defenseless target during the criminal invasion of January 8th.

In politics, as in life, those who make excuses for saying something can’t be done are usually surprised by someone doing it. Before sending the batch of dismissals to the Official Gazette, Cappelli had already provided the Federal Supreme Court with the names of the plundered soldiers parading a complacent complicity among the invaders.

Moreover, it was after a provocation by Cappelli that Supreme Minister Alexandre de Moraes determined the release of the footage captured on the day of the riot by the Planalto cameras. Gonçalves Dias had placed the scenes under a five-year secrecy. Had it not been for Lula’s passivity with the inactive obscurity of Gonçalves Dias, his friend of two decades, the government might not have fallen head over heels in a mixed CPI of the coup.