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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Brazilian President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, the former army captain who took power on Sunday, is about to give the military its biggest role in the government of the country. country since the fall of the dictatorship more than thirty years ago.
To the surprise of some voters, Bolsonaro devoted much of his victory speech to revisiting his most extreme statements of recent decades. He promised to defend democracy after declaring in 1999 that only a civil war could solve Brazil's problems, and promised to respect racial and sexual diversity after pleading for hitting children to prevent them from "becoming gay." ". A convinced nationalist, he spoke with enthusiasm. its plans to open the economy to foreign investors.
But Bolsonaro remained broadly consistent on one issue: his penchant for the military and his policing. On Sunday, he confirmed that retired General Augusto Heleno would be his future defense minister, breaking with the tradition of civilian leadership over the armed forces.
The elected president and former paratrooper promised to give more positions to the government to the military who served alongside him under the Brazilian right-wing dictatorship of 1964-1985. He also plans to send soldiers to the streets to help keep criminals and drug traffickers at bay in a country where nearly 64,000 people were murdered last year.
While opponents have expressed concerns about the country's young democracy, Bolsonaro's plan to enlist the armed forces to fight rampant corruption and crime has delighted many Brazilians, who are doing more. confidence in the armed forces than any other institution.
About 56 percent of Brazilians trust the armed forces, according to the country's Getulio Vargas Foundation. This compares to only 6% of Brazilians who trust the federal government, following the massive corruption scandal in the car wash system that has dishonored many of Bolsonaro's political opponents.
"He has to fight against violence," said Jota Carlos Dionísio da Fonseca, a 43-year-old nurse in Rio de Janeiro. "It's out of control, it's more than we can handle."
Under the leadership of Mr. Bolsonaro, some 40 members of the Brazilian military and police won congressional seats in simultaneous local elections held this month. They appealed to voters with a simple and attractive solution: to replace legislators with law enforcement officials.
"People trusted us," said policewoman Katia Sastre, who was elected to Congress this month. Mrs. Sastre stated that she had never considered a political career, but that she had been overwhelmed by the parties' offers after the broadcast of a video this year that she had shot down a criminal in front of a school in São Paulo on the occasion of Mother's Day.
Jair Bolsonaro, President-Elect of Brazil, with his future Defense Minister, General Augusto Heleno Pereira, in April.
Photo:
Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
The often bellicose statements by Bolsonaro and the country's new political leaders have provoked criticism from opposition supporters and human rights organizations such as Amnesty International. , some of whom fear that the presidency of Mr. Bolsonaro will lead to a return to military rule.
Yascha Mounk, German-American political scientist at Harvard University and author of "The People vs. Democracy, "said that by flirting with a more military government, Brazilian voters seem to be suffering from the same generational amnesia that has right-wing nationalism to flourish in Europe.
"In the aftermath of the Second World War in Europe and military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s, citizens were largely immune to the call of authoritarianism and did not want to make use of it. experience, "he said. "Now, facing the weaknesses of the current political system, they seem ready to forget the lessons of their past."
According to some estimates, several hundred political prisoners were killed under the Brazilian military dictatorship, making it less brutal than those in Chile or Argentina. The country has seen periods of rapid growth fueled by infrastructure investments under the regime, but has finally suffered paralyzing inflation.
Today, more than one-third of eligible voters in Brazil were born after the dictatorship or were only toddlers at the end of 1985. Orlando Rodrigues, a 30-year-old boy from Rio de Janeiro Janeiro is one of them.
"I do not know if a coup d'etat would be a good thing or a bad thing, it's a question mark," Rodrigues said. He said his experience of democracy – a few decades of civilian rule often marked by corruption – had left him unconvinced of its benefits.
According to a survey conducted by Datafolha this month, about a third of Brazilians believe that the dictatorship has had a net positive effect on the country.
"Foreigners criticize Bolsonaro because they do not know Brazil," said Valdimilson Rocha, 33, a public servant in Brasilia. "They do not know our reality of violence, corruption, lack of infrastructure, health, sanitation. Bolsonaro is a kind of revolution to settle all that.
Hardist Jair Bolsonaro won 55% of the vote to become Brazil's next president. The WSJ explains how the ex-captain of the army firebrand intends to change the largest country in Latin America. Photo: EPA
For Ivo Herzog, whose father journalist, Vladimir, was assassinated in 1975 by the military government that Mr. Bolsonaro served, comments like this are heartbreaking. He has quarreled with several friends who, to his surprise, supported the politician, he said.
Prior to his presidency, Bolsonaro had spent most of the last three decades as a member of the right-wing Congress on the sidelines of Brazilian politics, better known for his outrageous statements than for his decisions. In 1999, he published one of his most incendiary television interviews, claiming that he was in favor of torture and that Congress should be closed.
"Unfortunately, things will only change the day a civil war breaks out and do the job that the military regime did not do: kill 30,000 people … If innocents die along the way, no problem." Bolsonaro has since expressed his more moderate view and vowed to respect the constitution as president. But he continues to praise the dictatorship that he has served.
Security experts also question the effectiveness of Bolsonaro's policing methods in the field. Robert Muggah, co-founder of the Igarapé Institute, a think tank on security in Rio de Janeiro, explained how the new president would implement his proposals to loosen gun laws and to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 16 from 18 years.
Here in Rio, the Brazilians have already had a glimpse of some of these proposals under consideration after the federal government sent an army this year to help police fight crime. According to Rio's National Institute of Public Security, military operations have claimed more lives, especially among the city's poor.
"I'm afraid of the police, she has killed people who have nothing to do with criminals," said a 67-year-old housekeeper living in one of the slums of Rio. "The shooting starts and everyone who passes can be hit, it comes back to chance."
Paulo Trevisani and Jeffrey T. Lewis contributed to this article.
Write to Samantha Pearson at [email protected] and Luciana Magalhaes at [email protected]
