Lula’s conciliation with the military included blocking PT’s PEC – 01/03/2024 – Power

“As long as I am president, there is no GLO”, said President Lula (PT) five days before signing a decree authorizing the Armed Forces to operate in a Law and Order Guarantee operation, the GLO, in ports and airports in Rio de Janeiro. Janeiro and São Paulo.

In GLO’s announcement, on November 1st, Lula justified the measure as necessary given the “very serious situation” involving organized crime in Rio de Janeiro. “Well, actually this decree establishes the creation of an integrated operation to combat organized crime and, therefore, I am making this GLO decree”, he said.

Lula’s change in stance with the GLO occurred after coordination between the commanders of the Armed Forces and the Minister of Defense, José Múcio Monteiro, which permeated the entire year’s work at the military summits.

The objective was to rebuild a relationship of trust between the military and the president after an intricate government transition and clashes following the attacks on the headquarters of Power on January 8.

Múcio signaled to interlocutors that some facts served as key turning points in the relationship between Lula and the military leaders. One of these cases was the FAB (Brazilian Air Force) operation to rescue Brazilians and their families at the beginning of the conflict between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.

The minister still believes that he managed to reverse the scenario of mutual distrust when Lula began, at the end of the first semester, to call military commanders directly, instead of using Múcio as an intermediary for contacts.

The Lula 3 government’s strategy to maintain civil-military relations in balance focuses on the perspective of conciliation. The plan goes against the more left-wing wings of the coalition that supported the PT member’s electoral campaign.

In the PT itself, for example, the majority wing tried to take advantage of the moment of military crisis to approve measures in Congress to eliminate military powers and change article 142 of the Constitution.

The movement, led by deputy Carlos Zarattini (PT-SP), ended up buried by the Lula government itself, which articulated the construction of a PEC (Proposed Amendment to the Constitution) agreed with the military leaders to provide only for the prohibition of military personnel remaining in the active if they contest elections.

Múcio also worked with Lula to avoid the re-creation of the Commission on Political Deaths and Disappearances — a demand from Minister Silvio Almeida (Human Rights) to investigate crimes committed during the military dictatorship.

In the view of historian and sociologist Lucas Pedretti, a scholar of civil-military relations, Lula has adopted in his third government the strategy of avoiding confrontation with the Armed Forces. For Pedretti, the conciliation promoted by Lula and Múcio may, as an effect, have guaranteed the PT’s governability.

“This political option leaves open a problem, which will manifest itself sooner or later, when there is a new political crisis, an institutional crisis. As the military continues to perceive itself as the moderating power of the Republic and continues to have institutional and legal mechanisms at its disposal for that.”

The only confrontation that the government promoted against the Armed Forces was when Múcio decided to dismiss the then commander of the Army, General Júlio César de Arruda, in the wake of the breach of trust caused by the acts of 8/1 and the reluctance to remove the former assistant from orders Mauro Cid to a leadership position in Goiânia (GO).

After the clash, Lula and Múcio arbitrated in favor of the military in discussions about the increase in the Forces’ budget and in conflicts between the Forces and the Federal Police, among other moments.

Ambassador Rubens Barbosa, president of Cedesen (Center for Defense and National Security), argues that there was a clear difference in the Lula 3 government compared to the PT’s previous administrations.

“In Lula 3, the relationship with the military was one of total distrust and restrictions of all kinds. It wasn’t like that in Lula 1 and 2. After a year, the situation changed completely and the relationship has never been more peaceful than it is now. ‘Thanks to’ Múcio”, he stated.

Lucas Pereira Rezende, professor of political science at UFMG, highlights that the principle adopted by Lula in his relationship with the military follows the same one adopted in the two previous governments. “The principle of accommodating the military so that they do not interfere in domestic political issues,” he said.

He assesses, however, that there are fundamental differences between PT administrations over the last two decades.

“Today we have a military ambassador at the Ministry of Defense. And the path has become the opposite, the military says what they want to do, and the minister [José Múcio] communicate this to the government. And the role of the Minister of Defense should be the opposite: a political actor signaling to the military what they should do, that is, society demanding from the military”, he added.

For the professor, the “accommodationism” with the military sought by Lula is the same done at different levels by all governments of the New Republic. “And it culminated in the coup camps and the attempt on January 8th. Until this lesson is learned, we will not have a full democracy in Brazil.”