Protesters dressed in Brazil’s national green and yellow colors charged into the country’s most important government buildings Sunday afternoon, smashing windows and furniture and ripping up documents before riot police forced them back into the streets by nightfall. Some 300 people were arrested, police said.
Mr. da Silva, who was some 500 miles away from the capital on Sunday visiting flood victims in the state of São Paulo, called the protesters “fanatic fascists,” and decreed a state of federal intervention in Brasília, an emergency measure by which the federal government temporarily replaces state authorities in charge of public security.
The 77-year-old leader, a standard-bearer of the Latin American left, accused Brasília’s military police of not acting to contain the protesters, many of whom had marched for more than an hour to get to the presidential palace. “They did absolutely nothing,” said Mr. da Silva of the military police, which counts many supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro among its ranks.
Mr. Bolsonaro condemned any attacks on government buildings. “Peaceful demonstrations, within the law, are part of democracy,” he wrote on Twitter. “However, vandalism and the invasion of public buildings like today’s acts, and like those practiced by the left in 2013 and 2017, are an exception,” he wrote, referring to previous waves of protests in the country.
An outspoken former army captain and friend of Donald Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro has yet to publicly concede that he lost the election, which Mr. da Silva won in October with 51% of the vote.
For months, Mr. Bolsonaro had said there was widespread fraud during October’s vote, without presenting evidence, polarizing the country’s electorate. He filed a request with the electoral court to annul ballots cast on most electronic voting machines, which would have overturned the Oct. 30 result. The request…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at WSJ.com: World News…