For the second time in less than a year, Zaire Balsonaro The Federal Ministry of Defense listed the Ministry of Defense in an electoral strategy against the Supreme Court. This time it was to issue a note of “denial” whom he usually classifies as a political enemy.
The targets at the time were Supreme Court Judge Luis Roberto Barroso and the former president of the Superior Electoral Court. At an academic conference yesterday, Barroso presented his views on the electoral process that he has tried to destabilize over the past two years, when he directed the TSE.
The judge summed up an audience of university students: “Tank parade [na frente do Congresso] This is an episode with scary intent. Completely baseless and fraudulent attack on the electoral process. There has been no fraud since 1996. Completely neutral, safe election. And now if you want to use the armed forces to attack. They are kindly invited to participate in the process, they are being instructed to attack the process and try to discredit it. “
There is nothing new in these six dozen words. But Bolsonaro found an opportunity to inflame the crisis between them by manipulating the court to gain his candidacy for re-election.
On Thursday, he used his powers, his pen and the official gazette to protect a friend, Daniel Silvera, a PTB federal deputy in Rio, who was sentenced to eight years and nine months in prison for crimes against democracy. Governance and coercion during the judicial process, including death threats to judges and their families.
On Sunday, he instructed the defense ministry to force the armed forces to “act contrary to the principles of democracy” to counter “insights or inspirations without evidence.”
Minister Paolo Sergio Noguira de Oliveira, a general who left the Army Command for the Defense Bureau less than a month ago, has joined the rejection (“irresponsible”, “serious crime” that “affects policy, harmony and respect within the organization”).
The note was issued eight months ago against another, more frightening and personalized, epidemic CPI president, Senator Omar Aziz (PSD-AM). The former was signed by Walter Braga Neto, a retired general who left the defense and confirmed “almost 90%” as a candidate for vice president on Balsonaro’s ticket.
Coincidentally or not, as Bolsonaro puts it, the same day the presidents of the Military Club – the Union of Retired – joined the STF in public criticism of defending Bolsonaro for the pardon of his convicted friend, a former military police officer released from Rio. Six years later de Janeiro military police. Dozens of crimes, including the use of fake documents in just six years.
In a coherent way, they used the favorite argument about freedom of expression, although the constitution does not recognize crimes against democratic rule and criminal law identifies the death threat as a common crime.
It is noteworthy, however, that in the notes of last year, the signatures of the commanders of Braga Neto and yesterday, Noguira de Oliveira, commanders of the army, navy and air force have disappeared.
The new defense, a government agency, has moved away from the armed forces, state institutions, which could suggest some progress in the constitutional text of each role.
In the previous, Braga Neto imposed his bizarre view on the “moderate role” of the armed forces, as he had already described at a congressional hearing, an understanding that was old in the unification of the republic and buried in the 1988 constitution.
In both cases, self-aggrandizement was abandoned by an apparently destitute military elite, but the opposition to civilian control – the resistance to the opening of military hospitals for victims of the epidemic – was exemplary, as recorded in the CPI’s pandemic record.
One of the most probable reasons is the imposition of a permanent failure of political power on control, as described in the Charter. The legislature, since the re-democratization, has limited itself to occasional negotiations with the armed forces at the expense of the pay sheet (over 80%). There is no control, inspection or prioritization of troop size reduction and technological modernization.
It was in this void that the activism of the union developed under Bolsonaro. As a deputy, he lured Officer Corps into the retail life of the barracks. In the presidency, he hinted at rescuing common arms initiatives from the era of “Brazil potency” in the dictatorship. As he did in February, when he returned from Moscow to outline a major war deal with Ukrainian warlord Vladimir Putin.
Judge Barroso, the target at the time, realized a “real risk” of politicizing the armed forces this election season. If exaggerated, as the Defense Minister General says, is good for the country. Judges general, active or retired – and probably no less than journalists.