Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro walks past the President of the Chamber of Deputies Rodrigo Maia during an official ceremony at the presidential office in Brasilia on June 17, 2020. (Photo by Sergio LIMA / AFP) (Photo by SERGIO LIMA/AFP via Getty Images)
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BY OLIVER STUENKEL | AUGUST 24, 2020
A proposal prohibiting active-duty personnel from government positions has found some support among the armed forces.
https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/the-backlash-against-brazils-politicized-military/
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SÃO PAULO – Growing concern in Brazil’s legislature, judiciary and civil society about the number of active-duty and reserve members of the military embedded in the Bolsonaro government has led Rodrigo Maia, president of Brazil’s lower house of Congress, to call for a rule that would limit the role of the armed forces in government. In an interview with Estadão newspaper earlier this month, the five-term congressman argued that it was “important to separate the state and the government. The armed forces are in the state. Policy makers, ministers, the president are in government. It is important to make clear that there is a wall.”
The number of military men in Jair Bolsonaro’s government is indeed staggering. According to a recent assessment commissioned by Brazil’s Federal Court of Accounts, known by its initials TCU in Portuguese, 6,157 military men and women (roughly split between active-duty and reserve) are currently serving in the Bolsonaro administration. That’s more than twice as many as under former President Michel Temer, and even more than at any point during the military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. The vice president is also a reserve general, and 10 of 23 Cabinet positions are held by either current or former military figures.
Maia is not the first political leader to speak out against the creeping militarization of politics. The situation has led Luiz Roberto Barroso, a Supreme Court justice, to draw parallels to Venezuela, where the armed forces also slowly assumed…
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