What will the military do now in Brazil without Bolsonaro?

During the four years of the extreme right-wing government of Captain Jair Bolsonaro, the issue of the military and the strength of its support for the president was in the headlines every other day.

Until then, since the end of the military dictatorship, the issue of the Army was never a problem for civilian governments.

Not even in the two mandates of the left trade unionist Lula da Silva, who always knew how to dialogue with them.

Civil society also held the Army in great appreciation, which, along with the Church, were the two best valued institutions in all national polls.

With the arrival of Bolsonaro, everything began to change and the military issue took center stage.

More than 6,000 members of the Armed Forces, active or in reserve, galloped into the Government and all other State institutions and enjoyed privileges that they had never had in the past.

It was even said that for the first time after the dictatorship, the military once again governed the country.

Until the Minister of Health, in the midst of the covid pandemic and with more than 700,000 fatalities, he was an active Army general.

And it was a disaster.

He himself said that he was acting under the orders of his boss, the president.

Even the delicate Brazilian Intelligence Agency (Abin) was with Bolsonaro occupied by the military, and today it is beginning to be discovered that the president did and undid it as he pleased, and that they could have acted in the failed coup of January 8, 2023.

Now Lula, who has made a good start in his foreign policy, opening doors and windows to restore Brazil to its former prestige as an emerging country, has his Achilles heel in dismantling the entire military apparatus that his predecessor had inserted into the institutions with the hope that they could be at your side when it comes to carrying out a coup to end democracy.

When Dilma Rousseff became president, then supported by Lula, a cartoon became famous in which the first female president appeared with a broom in her hand sweeping away a series of ministers inherited from Lula who appeared involved in the corruption scandals of

.

Today, Lula, who has returned to power for the third time and who in his two previous terms never had any problems with the Army, would need to inherit Dilma's broom to sweep the thousands of members of the Army suspected of supporting Bolsonaro from the institutions. .

The Parliamentary Investigation Commission that has just been installed in Congress to analyze the attempted military coup will be able to reveal to what extent the Armed Forces were involved in Bolsonaro's wishes to impose a military coup.

In any case, as political and military analysts are insisting, this time Lula will have to show a strong hand in order to put the military in its rightful place in a democracy.

To do this, however, he must understand that the position of the military accustomed to the flattery and privileges they have enjoyed during the four turbulent years of the Bolsonaro government will no longer be the one they enjoyed in their previous terms.

Whether he wants to or not, and apparently he is trying, Lula will have to pick up Dilma's broom to begin to sweep away from the structures of the Government and the State the soldiers who should have stayed in the barracks and who will not stop making active resistance. or passive so as not to lose your privileges.

In truth, Lula has already begun to do so: he has just fired 28 soldiers whom Bolsonaro had placed in the National Security Cabinet, suspected of having been accomplices in the failed coup on January 8.

It is true that said cleaning task will not be easy, since the times and the mood of the Armed Forces is not now that of the left-wing governments of the past.

Bolsonaro's passage through the presidency and his coup collusion with the military have clouded the harmony and tranquility of an Army that had coexisted in happy harmony with democratic governments, even the most left-wing ones.

The landscape has changed.

The waters have been troubled and will take time to calm down, especially since Bolsonaro was defeated, but the root Bolsonaro, the extremist, already connected to the world's far-left movements, is still alive and aggressive on social media and in Congress.

Lula will no longer be able to forget that today he will have to govern with a Parliament in which he is in the minority, since the majority continues to be Bolsonaristas and in which the group called the bullet, made up of ex-military and ex-police officers, has grown and is still willing to embitter the life of the new government.

Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS America

and receive all the latest news from the region

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber