Brazilian by the sword in 1889 is a stain mistaken for a medal by many soldiers, particularly those general officers who arrived in the Forces in the throes of the 1964 dictatorship.
For them, the concept of a moderating function, which even gained a pseudo-constitutional veneer through the work of 21st-century liveries, is inherent to the uniform. of the civil power to deal with Defense matters, dealing with the military only when coups are useful, helped to forge this notion.
He has always adhered to this ideology. Of the “arrest and break” type, he denied the authoritarian character of the regime of the generals who preceded him and their crimes. As a man and his circumstances, he has proven himself a fit heir to them from the results of the coup investigation thus far.
Obviously, he needs a fair trial and full defense, something that was denied to an entire generation by those in uniform. With luck, the process could turn into a de facto revolution within the Army, the main arm of Brazilian military power.
Four-star generals are rare birds. There are only 19 in the Army, out of each class of 400 cadets trained in Agulhas Negras. Unfortunately, some did not prove to be up to the investment made by the State in their training in the 2022 crisis.
Apparently, Braga Netto was one of them. The song with the dawn of the uniform of the then Navy commander of the coup in those final days of the Bolsonaro era has already been sung in verse and prose, and now eight soldiers are imprisoned.
The damage from the symbiosis that established them with Bolsonarism will take a long time to be purged. But the attempt to revive the political role of the Armed Forces, Eduardo Villas Bôas, came up against democratic institutions.
Braga Netto was already seen as a contaminated element by his peers long before he took on the coup mantle that the PF has pointed out, and the trio of Tomás Ribeiro Paiva, Valério Stumpf and Richard Nunes in the Army High Command gave materiality to what could have been just rhetoric.
The challenge now falls to Tomás, who became commander of the Army in the wake of a historic legalist speech, in the midst of He, alongside Minister José Múcio (Defense), while dodging the attacks of , which sought institutional punishment for the entire Forces for Bolsonarism on their part.
In this regard, he was successful, but the bill came in the form of police investigation and the relentless pen of . If the minister was seen by members of the High Command as someone who, he gave Tomás an opportunity to consolidate his work.
The moment is delicate, especially with the always uninhibited reserve. The pajama gang’s WhatsApp groups are buzzing with conspiracy theories in which Moraes and Moraes operate together to dismantle the Forces and worse.
One should not despise them: when it was adopted by a group of retired generals who believed it would be possible to dominate it and promote such a comeback, with the blessing of Villas Bôas. What happened, and after three years of government the then president had already
Nor should it be giving excessive weight, and Tomás knows that. The generals or the PSOL, but it is essential to label the Forces as a whole as coup plotters and Bolsonarists.
That said, the commander will continue to do so for some, but increasingly in hushed tones and after hours. If you combine hierarchical discipline with the example of Braga Netto and others about what happens to those who step out of line, you can have victory.
He is racing against time and needs to rely on impeccable work from the Judiciary in 2022. Only this combination will guarantee the institutional resistance of the military establishment to the eventual and plausible return of Bolsonarism, or some generic form, to power.
