PT articulates amendment to eliminate coup-like view of article – 02/11/2023 – Panel

The PT bench in the Chamber of Deputies articulates the presentation of a PEC (Proposed Amendment to the Constitution) that proposes changes to Article 142 of the Constitution, with the aim of barring active duty military personnel from holding civilian positions in governments, limiting Law Enforcement Operations and of the Order (the so-called GLOs) and end the distorted coup readings that are made of the text.

The initiative brings together projects by PT deputies from SP Alencar Santana, Carlos Zarattini. The idea should still have the support of Rui Falcão, the likely new president of the Constitution and Justice Commission, the first one through which the PEC would go through.

The PEC under development should absorb Santana’s project that determines that active-duty military personnel who decide to participate in governments in civilian positions have to go to the reserve.

“Military and politics are things that cannot go hand in hand, at the same time, with a member of the military on active duty. If you take up the role of someone who is in the military, no problem. You can hold a position in the Ministry of Defense, for example. But you cannot be a minister Health”, says Santana.

Zarattini, in turn, is the author of a project that criticizes the role of the Armed Forces in GLO operations in public security.

Recently, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) said that a GLO operation in Brasilia after the January 8 attacks on the headquarters of the Powers would result in a coup.

In view of this, the deputy proposes a reformulation of article 142, limiting the internal action of the military to civil actions, such as the one currently taking place in the Yanomami Indigenous Land.

Falcão, on the other hand, advocates rewriting the text of Article 142 to eliminate distorted and coup-mongering interpretations that have been made of it in recent years, especially by former President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) and his supporters, that the Armed Forces would have the prerogative to intervene in the face of extreme conflicts between Powers, as a kind of “moderator” power.

Article 142 of the Constitution governs the role of the military in the country. It says that “the Armed Forces are permanent and regular national institutions, organized based on hierarchy and discipline, under the supreme authority of the President of the Republic, and are intended for the defense of the homeland, the guarantee of constitutional powers and, on the initiative of any of these, of law and order”.

The interpretation that this would authorize the military to intervene in other Powers has already been contested by several jurists and by opinion of the Chamber of Deputies.

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