A growing wave of militarization in the Federal Administration
Since Jair Bolsonaro took over the presidency, he has increased the number of military personnel in his administration and openly defended the military presence in the federal executive branch. Only in the first line of ministries, he started with seven; less than two months later, he increased to eight and, until August 2020, he had eleven ministers with military careers, the most recent ones appointed for the Education and Health departments. “With civilians it didn’t work out,” he said, in reference to keeping the active-duty general Eduardo Pazuello in charge of the Health Ministry – a post he even held for four months before assuming the ministry on an interim basis.
In this scenario, several data on the military presence in the political arena have been produced. Some refer only to the federal government; others, to the three branches of government, revealing their massive concentration in the executive branch. For some, only positions of trust in the executive branch are accounted for; for others, even temporary and fixed-term hires – the modality used to hire military personnel to manage public schools, the so-called Civic-Military Schools – are on the radar. Even with regard to the categories of military personnel there are differences: while some surveys show only active duty military personnel, others expose numbers of both active duty military personnel and reservists.
All these data, regardless of their differences, show that the military presence has increased significantly under the current administration, raising alarms about the prospects of civilian control over the military. It is important to underline that since the end of the dictatorship (1964-1985) in Brazil, military personnel have been limited by the Federal Constitution to act in the national Defense area. Given the recent past of authoritarian governments and the current context of health emergency, it is necessary to be vigilant about dangerous ideas of military intervention in democracy under the pretext of crisis containment.
Read more about it here – in Portuguese [find out here] and about the military in the Amazon here [1]
Read more about this episode here – in Portuguese [find out here] and several other cases of state superintendents appointed by the Environment Minister despite the lack of technical qualification [find out here] [find out here] [red id=1349-IN] [find out here] [find out here] [find out here] [find out here] [find out here]
Read more about it here – in Portuguese [find out here]. Read more about the growing presence of military officers in the federal government until 2020 here [1] [2] [3]
Read more about this civic-military schools here [1] [2] and about this episode – in Portuguese [find out here]
Read more about it here – in Portuguese [1] [find out here]. In may 2020 a new Superintendent is nominated, also from the military and without technical qualifications [find out here]. Members of the military without the necessary tecnhical qualifications were also nominated in 2020 as superintendents in the states of Amapá [find out here], Amazonas [find out here], Goiás [find out here] and Espírito Santo [find out here], for example. Read about the context of ‘militarization’ of the environmental protection public bodies here [1]
Read more about the risks for the audiovisual sector under Bolsonaro – in Portuguese [1]