The reconstruction of civil-military relations in the democratic order – 03/22/2023 – Maria Hermínia Tavares

Last Sunday (19/3), this Sheet opened full page for an interview with senator Hamilton Mourão (Republicanos-RS). In it, the retired general criticized the current government’s intention to prohibit active-duty military personnel from holding public office. The proposal, he fired, would entail treating them as “second-class citizens”.

Citizen Mourão was Bolsonaro’s deputy, who multiplied the number of uniforms in the highest echelons of the federal administration, sometimes with disastrous results. This was the case of Health management under the leadership of General Eduardo Pazuello; there was no other in the National Council for the Legal Amazon coordinated by the same Mourão.

In the Vice-Presidency, he put on a show face while the chief tried everything to involve the Armed Forces in the offensive to discredit democratic institutions.

The defeat of the 8/1 putsch was due to the firmness of the new government — and the fiasco of the attempt to engage the barracks in it. At the last minute, the High Command of the three Arms was faithful to its constitutional role, contrary to what some specialists predicted.

It is true that no other president has courted the military as much as the former captain, and certainly no other president has had so much sympathy between commanders and commanded. Even so, neither one nor the other let themselves be seduced by the coup mirage. Now an opportunity opens up to continue building civil-military relations that strengthen the democratic order.

This process, which the Spanish economist and former Minister of Defense Narcis Serra (1982-1991) called the “military transition” —the end of the barracks’ veto power over civil affairs and the establishment of civilian supremacy over policy in the area— , here began timidly with the creation of the Ministry of Defense under civilian leadership, in 1999, and was interrupted in the first year of Bolsonaro’s ill-fated passage to power.

Its resurgence includes the measure criticized by Mourão, strengthened, moreover, with the investiture of the politician José Múcio Monteiro in the portfolio that part of the high-ranking uniforms considered their exclusive space.

It just isn’t enough. It will be crucial to implement a policy that clearly establishes the legitimate functions of the Armed Forces, expands civilian cadres competent in defense matters, and makes thoughtful use of Law and Order Operations. In this context, the punishment of military personnel involved in crimes against the rule of law may be an additional instrument.

The matter will soon enter the Senate’s agenda when it considers Bolsonaro’s veto to that lucid piece of legislation that replaced the senile National Security Law.

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