Brazil police stop man with explosive device, knife trying to enter Lula inauguration
The mood in Brasilia was tense after the most fraught election in a generation. Police detained a man on Sunday who was carrying fireworks and a knife and tried to enter the esplanade for the inauguration, Brasilia police said.
In his previous years as Workers Party president from 2003-2010, the former union leader lifted millions of Brazilians from poverty during a commodity boom that buoyed the economy. His supporters have protested for two months that the election was stolen and called for a military coup to stop Lula returning to office in a climate of vandalism and violence.
"Leaders who were supposed to reassure and unite the nation ... allowed silence or inopportune and deleterious protagonism to create an atmosphere of chaos and social disintegration," Mourao said in a speech late on Saturday. Bolsonaro's four years in power for leaving a strong economy, but criticized environmental backsliding after deforestation in the Amazon reached a 15-year-high.