Ione Wells
speaker
364 appearances
21 recordings
3 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 17 Aug
Ione Wells’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 13 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 3.
Appearances
They broke into and vandalised government buildings in Brasilia, the Supreme Court, Congress, the presidential palace, seeking to overthrow the new president, even though there was a sort of recess period at the time. So these buildings were actually not very occupied. But the scenes were reminiscent of the January 6th Capitol riots in 2021 in the US after Donald Trump lost that election.
Some rioters said publicly that their purpose was to encourage the military to join them, effectively calling for a coup. And President Lula himself also wasn't in Brasilia at the time. He was in Sao Paulo state, but he declared an emergency, a sort of state of emergency, essentially, before dispatching the National Guard to Brasilia to try to restore order.
There were lots of clashes between police and these protesters before the police eventually managed to control the situation. Since then, there have been ongoing... legal battles with some of these protesters. Again, a bit of a parallel there with the US. Lula has called the riots terrorist acts, said that those who took part in it would be punished.
And in the end, more than 1500 people were detained, some of them even given jail sentences. But what is interesting is this case now has really, it's still very much part of the dialogue here in Brazil because of questions about Bolsonaro's involvement in it.
That's right. He said he had no responsibility. He said it was wrong that people were protesting in that way. And of course, physically, he was in a different country at the time in Florida. So on the surface claimed that he was distancing himself from what his supporters were doing.
Yeah, definitely. I think the reason why the mention of a coup or the call for a coup in Brazil is very troubling still, and actually Latin America more generally, is that military dictatorships are not distant history here. The military dictatorship in Brazil was in place until 1985. And that was caused by the Brazilian army at the time and conservative sectors of society and
Some politicians, but also some figures from the Catholic Church with support from the US initiating that coup to overthrow the governments at the time. And what resulted was years of extensive censorship of human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances. Very, very traumatic period of time for many in Brazil until eventually democracy elections were restored.
And so I think it's a very different context in Brazil and in other parts of Latin America, too, when people talk about the threat of a coup or calling for a coup, because that is for many people living memory for them.
That's right. What's interesting as well, and maybe this is where we kind of rewind a little bit almost, because Jai Bolsonaro, it's thought, essentially saw opinion polls ahead of that election and almost started to roll the pitch a little bit for him not winning it.
By doing things like casting doubt on the Brazilian voting system, he falsely claimed on state TV, for example, that Brazil's voting system was vulnerable to fraud.
He essentially kind of accused the electoral system of not being fit for purpose, basically casting doubt on the democratic process in total, which that and his sort of undermining of democracy in doing that led to him being banned from running for office until 2013.
Although, interestingly, at the moment, there is a bill going through Congress in Brazil which could reduce the period of ineligibility from eight years to two years if somebody is, you know, if someone's received a conviction for abusing political or economic power from the electoral authorities in the way that Bolsonaro has.
There is a sort of bill that is debating whether that ban should be reduced. Now, if that's passed... the ban that Bolsonaro is facing could potentially be shortened. But at the moment, he is not allowed to run for office by the time of the next election, which is expected next year in 2026.
He's also faced numerous other legal accusations, accusations by police of faking his COVID vaccine certificate, of embezzlement. related to watches and jewellery received from Saudi Arabia. There's lots of different kind of legal challenges that he's faced but none of them so far have managed to sort of properly dampen his base or momentum really.
That's right. So as we discussed, obviously his supporters taking to the street to try and sort of physically overthrow power in those government buildings. Behind the scenes, the allegation is that Jair Bolsonaro was essentially plotting a coup in other means. There are various different allegations against him, including that he had conversations with leading members of the military to try and
get them on side to overthrow President Lula. There were also even allegations that he planned to poison President Lula or assassinate one of the top Supreme Court judges, for example. So there is a whole host of crimes that... President Bolsonaro has now been charged with by the top prosecutor in the country. They include instigating a coup, posing serious threats to federal property.
There are accusations as well that he may have encouraged, spurred on some of his supporters to do some of the acts that they subsequently did. And this is part of a
long long investigation that has been going on it follows a hefty police report that came out a couple of months ago and now the top prosecutor in the country has basically considered that report said there's enough evidence in there to charge him and it's now going to the Supreme Court so if the Supreme Court agree with this prosecutor's assessment Bolsonaro could well be in a lot of trouble indeed could face a trial potentially sometime later this year.
I think so. Yeah, I think there's a lot of debate actually at the moment about whether if Bolsonaro faces trial, and it is still an if at the moment, it will sort of help or hinder him.
I remember actually when I was in the US for the US election in November, going to some of the Donald Trump rallies, for example, there was merchandise for sale, you know, t-shirts saying things like, I'm voting for the convicted felon.
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