By CARLOS TAUTZ*
There is no other way for the civil power to deal with the uniforms than by giving them orders, not blessings.
Not a single idea of the engineer José Múcio Monteiro is known about the extremely complex theme of national defense. But, even so, Múcio Monteiro received from the graduated president Lula the strategic mission of playing, from the 1st. January 2023, precisely the Ministry of Defense, a critical portfolio from a political point of view, which, judging by the record of its occupants in the last six years, must pass until the possibility of Lula ending or not his next term .
Those who understand the subject guarantee: in practice, Lula handed over the portfolio to the military, when he chose to lead it a politician far from his closest circle and without enough political weight to head the Ministry and its generals. These same ones who, accomplices of terrorists, feed (literally) the mob stationed at the Army Headquarters in Brasilia, from where the uniforms in CBF shirts left to set fire to the city, moments after the new President's diplomation this Monday (12) .
“The choice of Minister Múcio does not reflect the decision of the political power, the power of the State, to exercise the supreme command of the armed forces. Rather, it reflects the attempt at conciliation, and that conciliation is impossible. Either the politician fits the military or the military fits the politician”, analyzed the historian Manuel Domingos Neto, in an article published on the website the earth is round. Retired professor at the Federal University of Ceará, Manuel Domingos Neto has already chaired the Brazilian Defense Studies Association (Abed). “The (military) guardianship won”, summarized, agreeing with Domingos, former federal deputy José Genoíno, former president of the PT, on the choice of Múcio.
Courage
To the graduated President, someone needs to reiterate what Celso Furtado already told him in n.o. 1 of the newspaper Brazil of Fact (2003), shortly after the PT took office in his first term: “Lula is going to need a lot of courage”, taught the greatest Brazilian economist of all time. In the case of José Múcio Monteiro, Celso Furtado's teaching means that, no matter how little Lula wants to fight, there is no other way for the civil power to deal with the uniforms than by giving them orders, not blessings. And that the united order now must be to return to govern Brazil according to its Constitution, contrary to what the ridiculous tyrants who gave birth to Jair, the abject beast produced and fed by the Army, want.
Well, the graduated president made a radical choice in the opposite direction of the civic courage that Celso Furtado demanded of him. The choice of José Múcio Monteiro proves that Lula once again practiced the atavistic Brazilian mania of subservient conciliation, and that the new president wanted nothing to learn from the amnesty granted in 1979 to torturers and rogue generals. He's doing what he's doing, even today. Someone needs to guide Lula to read Florestan Fernandes, the greatest of our sociologists, founder of the PT, who taught more or less the following: what is not resolved returns.
It is also questionable what will actually be done in the field of defense by someone whose only major contribution to national history took place in 2016. Rousseff the “fiscal pedals” and thus provided the “technical basis” for the coup. Now, he won a position of the highest political sensitivity from Lula, both outside and inside Brazil.
Fight in the shadows
Defense is in charge of operating policies to deter external threats in a world that is undergoing a change of hegemony in global terms. At the same time, José Múcio Monteiro will also have to deal with uniformed cadres as powerful as they are unknown, connected with the armed forces of central countries of the international system and used to fighting in the shadows and in the interstices of the Brazilian State. The future minister will still have to decide what to do with the thousands of military personnel that Jair Bolsonaro quartered on official payrolls.
Generals earn up to 1 million a month, according to the website Congress in Focus. This is the case of Braga Netto, the former vice-candidate on Bolsonaro’s ticket and commander of the financial-military intervention in Rio de Janeiro in 2018 – until today he has not provided an account on whether and how R$ 1,2 billion would have been spent budgeted for this adventure. In turn, Augusto Heleno, the ridiculous head of official espionage who also pockets hundreds of thousands of reais every 30 days from the widow, escaped in 2017 a millionaire scandal at the Brazilian Olympic Committee, of which he was vice-president at R$ 80 thousand monthly. The small crowd had a “right” to the remains of the booty. Around 79 thousand squares were illegally presented by the Ministry of Citizenship with emergency aid of R$ 600, according to TCU.
lawfare
By leaving this whole situation to someone so much to the liking of the military (Múcio was even praised by Vice-President Mourão), Lula is feeding the monster. It allows him to grow in authority, even after the widespread assault on public coffers, in particular that of Health, as proved by the CPI on COVID-19. The graduated president seems to have already forgotten even the coup that Dilma Roussef suffered just six years ago and does not see the political assassination of which vice-president Cristina Kirchner is a victim right now, right next door, in Argentina. By the way, there is little left for another round of blows based on lawfare simultaneously target progressive presidents in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela.
If you still don't understand what the strategy of lawfare, Lula should consult Cristiano Zanin, his own criminal lawyer and one of the leading experts on the subject at the international level. Or she can simply remember the frauds practiced by gangs of judges, judges and prosecutors. They led him to spend 580 days illegally, due to political persecution, in the dungeons of the Federal Police in Curitiba, under the praetorian guard of Sergio Moro and Deltan Dalagnol – the latter of whom have yet to render accounts to Justice.
Lula, listen to Manuel Domingos Neto and José Genoíno. Remember Celso Furtado and Florestan Fernandes. Or simply reread the incomparable Guimarães Rosa: “The flow of life envelops everything, life is like this: it heats up and cools down, tightens and then loosens, calms down and then becomes restless. What she wants from us is courage".
*Carlos Tautz is a journalist and doctoral candidate in history at the Fluminense Federal University (UFF).
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