By Luis Kawaguti*
(Opinion) The energetic army determined to not intervene within the establishments of the Republic after the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).
The Armed Forces’ management held again the impetus of officers, primarily from the reserve, who mistakenly wished a army intervention primarily based on Article 142 of the Constitution.
But this was not acknowledged by the Lula authorities. The alternative of the newly appointed Army Commander, Júlio César de Arruda, made it very troublesome to comprise the temper and cope with the discontent within the barracks.
The army fears a potential strategy of political interference within the Armed Forces, much like the method that occurred in Venezuela.
There, Chavism selected officers to the Armed Forces’ high in alternate for armed assist for the regime’s indefinite perpetuation of energy.
This will not be the case with Arruda’s alternative, however the early change of the Army commander opened the door to fears concerning the Armed Forces’ future underneath Lula.
The army interpreted the autumn of the Army commander as the results of a conflict of narratives.
While army commanders had been assuring Lula that there was no politicization (pro-Jair Bolsonaro) within the barracks, advisors to the president created the distorted picture that the Armed Forces could be a risk to the federal government.
Lula changed Arruda because of a supposed disaster of confidence after the encampments and vandalism within the Praça dos Três Poderes on January 8.
Defense Minister José Múcio Monteiro mentioned there had been a “fracture in a level of trust” to justify his dismissal.
Múcio, who extra radical wings of the PT have criticized, mentioned that the alternative was an funding to convey the Armed Forces nearer to President Lula.
But the impact appears to have been the other.
The troops had been knowledgeable of their commander’s resignation early Saturday afternoon by a TV information bulletin, thought-about inelegant, to say the least.
Arruda had been in workplace for lower than a month. The president’s try to point out authority was very dangerous and put the pacification course of within the barracks in danger.
Like a big a part of the inhabitants, many army personnel is individually outraged by the lamentable normalization of Lula’s candidacy, by the unlawful and abusive inquiries by the Supreme Court, and by the omission of Congress.
Institutionally, nonetheless, the Armed Forces by no means ceased to behave as organs of state and disapproved of the acts of vandalism dedicated on Jan. 8.
Even the noblest of motivations can’t function a justification for vandalism or interruption of the functioning of establishments.
NARRATIVE AGAINST ARRUDA
Last week, “allies of the Presidential Administration” allegedly instructed Lula that General Arruda had colluded with demonstrators taking part in an encampment in entrance of military headquarters in Brasilia, in response to columnist Paulo Cappelli of the Metrópoles web site.
These advisors claimed that Arruda had ordered his troops to forestall the Federal District police from arresting protesters on the encampment after the vandalism on the eighth.
But this was a distorted model of occasions.
Military personnel instructed the War Games column underneath anonymity that the Army particularly prevented the arrests from going down at night time.
The goal was to keep away from a violent confrontation between police and demonstrators. There had been ladies and youngsters within the group.
The resolution was additionally influenced by the truth that the habits of a crowd is at all times unpredictable.
The police operation came about in a army space, Crystal Square. Therefore, the Army had jurisdiction and the obligation to ensure the bodily integrity of all concerned.
The arrests ended up taking place on the morning of Jan. ninth, peacefully and with the collaboration of the Army.
After the acts of vandalism, the STF’s order to dismantle the camp in Brasilia was completely comprehensible, appropriate, and obligatory.
But the classification of the protesters as “terrorists” doesn’t correspond to actuality.
It solely justifies wider repression towards anybody who expresses their displeasure with Lula or the Supreme Court.
Moreover, the “wholesale criminalization” made by the STF is technically unsustainable and past widespread sense.
The rumors created by Lula’s advisors appeared to have dissipated.
On Friday (Jan. 20), the day earlier than the resignation, the president met with Múcio, Arruda, and the Navy and Air Force commanders.
After the assembly, Múcio mentioned in an interview that there was no hyperlink between the vandalism and the Armed Forces.
Lula had mentioned days after the occasions within the Praça dos Três Poderes that he suspected that police and army had opened the doorways of the Planalto Palace for the protesters to enter.
One of the hypotheses for Arruda’s resignation is that Lula wouldn’t have been glad with the Army’s actions concerning his private suspicions.
Another speculation could be a supposed refusal by Arruda to fireplace a army officer on the request of the PT.
CONTROVERSY WITH RESERVE OFFICERS
The normal chosen to exchange Arruda was the then-military commander of the southeast, Tomás Miguel Ribeiro Paiva.
He participated within the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti and the Law and Order operations within the Alemão and Penha favelas in Rio de Janeiro.
He is a army man of unquestionable repute and, days in the past, defended respect for the outcomes of the elections.
The President of the Republic has the prerogative to decide on the Army Commander.
Lula had chosen Arruda following the establishment’s custom, by which the oldest officer needs to be chosen for command.
The alternative of General Tomás can also be in accordance with the seniority criterion, which is extremely prized by the army.
However, the selection is taken into account controversial amongst a part of the Army’s reserve officers, who’re sad with the truth that the establishment didn’t heed the request of demonstrators for army intervention in politics after Lula’s election.
Some of them have launched a misguided smear marketing campaign towards a number of officers to encourage intervention.
Without figuring out themselves or offering proof, they claimed that Tomas supported Lula and opposed army intervention. But there isn’t any proof of partisanship within the Army High Command.
According to the reserve officers, the alleged hyperlink between the final and the president is that Tomás has a friendship with former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
He took care of the safety of the ex-president’s spouse within the Nineties. However, no direct hyperlink was offered between Tomas, Lula, or the PT.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO GO THE WAY OF VENEZUELA?
Military personnel interviewed by Jogos de Guerra underneath the situation of anonymity listed factors that might imply the Workers’ Party’s political interference within the Armed Forces’ construction.
The most important components of interference could be political intervention within the promotion of senior officers, interference within the constitutional missions of the Armed Forces, and the restructuring of army faculties to advertise historic revisionism.
PROMOTIONS
The choice of army officers for the best ranks within the Army, Navy, and Air Force is presently made by means of inner processes within the three forces primarily based on seniority and meritocracy standards.
In precept, the Executive can do precisely what occurred on Saturday with Arruda.
The logic of the maneuver had been described earlier than the final’s resignation by professor Francisco Teixeira from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in an interview with the newspaper “Valor”.
“Military personnel is public servants who follow orders; they don’t represent anything, anyone. This has to be established. And it’s easy: send them to the reserve and appoint younger generals. The idea of ‘military power’ is the source of all deceit,” Teixeira mentioned within the interview.
In 2021, Jair Bolsonaro modified his Defense Minister and the three Armed Forces commanders due to a scarcity of alignment with the federal government. But he adopted the indications of the Army, Navy, and Air Force in selecting the replacements.
The former president of the PT, José Genoino, mentioned on Friday (Jan. 20) in an interview with the channel DCM that he expects the Lula authorities to advertise what he known as a “democratic apparatus” by means of reforms such because the creation of a brand new National Defense Policy.
In it, for instance, the selection of commanders could be made not by seniority standards however by the truth that the officer accepts the authority of the president and the Constitution.
“We have the chance to make democratic reformulations about the role of the Armed Forces, the relationship with civil power, a product of popular sovereignty.”
“To change this structure, as Lula defined it, of this moderating power, as they [the military] think they represent since the Empire period until now,” mentioned Genoino.
The concern within the barracks now could be that the Workers’ Party will attempt to affect the Armed Forces to favor the promotion of particular officers – not essentially to the command, however to the highest of the establishments, utilizing political standards.
There can also be the opportunity of political stress to ship sure army officers to the reserve.
Both the elimination of a commander and any stress associated to promotions could be seen as assaults on the cohesion of the Armed Forces.
Mission
José Genoino has mentioned up to now to Opera Mundi that he want to take away from the Armed Forces the constitutional attribution to behave in crises associated to public safety.
This happens at the moment by means of the so-called GLO (Operations to Guarantee Law and Order), supplied for within the Constitution and employed greater than 150 instances since 1988.
His thought is to create a sort of National Guard, supposedly differently from the present National Force.
The army is split concerning the GLO missions. Many see them as a supply of authorized issues.
The former Army commander, General Eduardo Villas Bôas, defended in 2017 the approval of a sequence of legal guidelines to guard the army from lawsuits for civilian deaths in public safety operations.
There are, nonetheless, those that suppose society can’t be disadvantaged of a GLO in a calamity situation simply because the federal government doesn’t need to give status to the Armed Forces.
The army additionally questions the viability of making a National Guard with a “canetada”. This is as a result of it takes a few years to kind personnel for a drive of this nature.
The eventual Brazilian participation in UN peacekeeping missions, just like the one in Haiti (2004-13), may also be influenced by frictions between the federal government and the Armed Forces, in response to army males interviewed by the column.
In their opinion, Lula’s advisors would see this kind of mission as a option to give status to the army that needs to be averted.
“Brazil has to stay away from these so-called ‘humanitarian’ operations. First, because they work as a laboratory of knowledge in guaranteeing law and order, which was there, Haiti was a guarantee of law and order, it had no sense.”
“Second, because you enable Brazil to have an exchange with American intelligence (…) Repeating the Haiti operation would be a big mistake,” mentioned Genoino.
EDUCATION AND HISTORICAL REVISIONISM
One of the concepts of theoreticians and supporters of Lula that causes concern to the Armed Forces is the concept civilians ought to command army coaching faculties.
This leftist view was defined by João Roberto Martins Filho, a professor on the Federal University of São Carlos, in an interview for the newspaper “Valor” on Jan. 18.
According to him, there may be the opportunity of adopting civilian administration fashions for army faculties, as happens in Spain or France.
However, he mentioned this can be a objective “we are still far from achieving”.
Military faculties are thought-about at the moment one of many most important components of cohesion within the Armed Forces.
They enable the officers who will at some point attain the best ranks of the army hierarchy to reside with their friends from college, receiving a unified and full training.
Active obligation army personnel say that it could be very dangerous to the Armed Forces if the curricula of those faculties had been modified.
They concern, for instance, a historic revisionism that tries to reinterpret the younger cadet’s historic episodes of the nation.
The concern is concentrated primarily on historic occasions wherein the army intervened or tried to intervene in deep political crises in Brazil.
The left normally associates such occasions with what it repudiates as “military tutelage” of politics.
Some examples of those episodes come from the imperial interval, within the campaigns led by Marshal Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, the Duke of Caxias, within the Balaiada (1838-1841), the 1842 Liberal Revolts and the Farroupilha Revolution (1835-1841). They assured Brazil’s territorial integrity.
The Republic was established in 1889 by a partly army motion, which instituted Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Brazil’s first president.
There are additionally the convulsions of the twentieth century, such because the revolutions of 1922, 1924, the Communist Intent of 1935, and, primarily, the episode that the army and a part of the inhabitants name the Revolution of 64 and that one other a part of society, composed by a number of political spectrums, calls the Coup of 64.
DEPOLITICIZATION OF THE ARMY?
The early substitution of the Army Commander and Lula’s positions in relation to the Armed Forces throughout his first days in workplace sounded to the army like a speech to depoliticize an establishment that has no politicization in any respect.
They consider that the president is listening to harmful ideas from advisors that, at greatest, have little understanding of the Armed Forces.
Until now, the Army has supplied repeated proof that the sword of Caxias will not be damaged and that the establishment can preserve its stability and defend legality, democracy, liberties, and the homeland.
But after what occurred this Saturday, what is going to the commanders say to appease the indignation of their troops?
* Luis Kawaguti is a journalist specializing in Defense, Security, and International Politics. He has labored for the BBC World Service and worldwide information companies. He labored for Veja, Diário de S.Paulo, Folha de S.Paulo, and UOL in Brazil. He is the creator of the e-book “A república negra” (Ed. Globo, 2006) concerning the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti.