Since reaching national prominence, when he became federal public security officer in Rio, in 2018, the general has drawn attention for his reserve and discretion.
He took on the mission unwillingly. It was contrary to , a political move by the Temer government, whose popularity was in ruins, and he was forced by the then Army commander, Eduardo Villas Bôas, to occupy the role – which would naturally fall to the military commander of the East, a position he held.
He has always highlighted his aversion to being photographed. His career in the Army was marked by a more bureaucratic and managerial profile than a political one. Far from being a strategist, he was considered a competent administrator, a pragmatic officer, a pineapple peeler.
The entry into the palace world, with the appointment to be, in 2020, four months away from being retired, raised a question, which has gained more relevance since then and is now reinvigorated by: how a four-star general averse to the spotlight and without political vocation or skills, he became first a political actor and then a Bolsonarist militant and a suspect, according to Federal Police investigations, of plotting a coup d’état?
Braga Netto is being held in accommodation at the headquarters of the 1st Army Division, in Vila Militar, in Rio, where he was taken on the 14th after being killed.
Requested by the PF, preventive detention was authorized by the minister of the (Supreme Federal Court), after a favorable opinion from the (Attorney General’s Office). According to the PF, the retired general had an active participation in the plan to prevent, through a coup, the inauguration of President Lula and even tried to obstruct justice by trying to hinder the investigations.
Braga Netto denies the accusations and, through lawyers, states that he will prove his innocence.
Like almost everything surrounding Braga Netto, the puzzle of the general’s conversion is obscure and intricate. Military personnel who worked with him point out three main reasons for the political/radical turn: 1) the combination of power and benefits offered to those who reach where he arrived; 2) daily coexistence with () and the captain’s paranoid-coup surroundings; 3) blind loyalty to the former president from the moment he became his subordinate.
Such loyalty, in fact, was one of the arguments – or messages – used recently by Braga Netto, via lawyers, and also through defenders, that high-ranking military personnel (such as Braga Netto and Augusto Heleno) would use the coup plot at the end of 2022 to overthrow him and take power — not to keep him in office.
Braga Netto’s lawyers stated that the general “was one of the few, among civilians and military personnel, who maintained loyalty to President Bolsonaro until the end of the government (…) and maintains it to this day.”
The relationship with the PF and Justice is the outcome of a partnership that began even before Bolsonaro was elected, with the clear return of those in uniform to the political spotlight in the Temer government – and which in the barracks was articulated by generals Villas Bôas and Sergio Etchegoyen.
The intervention led by Braga Netto and General Richard Nunes – appointed by him as Secretary of Public Security – had a disastrous start, in an ungoverned Rio, whose tragic emblem was the murder of . When federal funds began to arrive, palliative measures partially alleviated the crisis, with the payment of late salaries to police officers and suppliers and the purchase of new equipment.
Secondly, there was a reduction in some levels of violence, notably cargo and vehicle theft. It was little, but, together with the feeling of security brought by the presence of tanks and troops in conflagrated areas, it was enough for 72% of the population to approve the intervention and defend its continuation.
The Army considered its role in the intervention a success. Entities that research urban violence and human rights groups have the opposite assessment – that it was a failure. It is a fact that it alleviated the chronic security problem in Rio for a period, but at a cost of at least R$1.2 billion in federal resources.
In any case, the intervention politically undermined Braga Netto, who was subsequently appointed chief of the Army General Staff (number two in the corporation), a role he held for less than a year until he became Bolsonaro’s minister.
Last March, echoes of the intervention emerged, with Chiquinho and Domingos Brazão and police chief Rivaldo Barbosa (former head of the RJ Civil Police), named as those responsible for Marielle’s death. Braga Netto when stating that it was up to the then secretary to appoint Rivaldo.
Richard – who is now Chief of Staff of the Army – took the stance, but behind the scenes, he considered it an imposture from his former ally.
Braga Netto fell out of favor with the current leadership of the Army when the messages in which he and Brigadier Baptista Jr, then commanders of the Army and Air Force, came to light.
Members of the High Command were particularly infuriated by Braga Netto’s dialogue with former captain Ailton Barros, for a series of transgressions and considered an execrable figure at the General Headquarters of the land force.
Braga Netto had no friendship with Bolsonaro, and generals Augusto Heleno and Luiz Eduardo Ramos were the godfathers of his entry into government. In the Civil House, the former intervener’s reputation as a good administrator fell to the ground with the government’s fiasco in the management of the .
Not for Bolsonaro, who honored his palace generals with benefits such as an ordinance that raised them above the constitutional ceiling – Braga Netto was one of those honored. In just two months of 2020, during the pandemic, .
After the Civil House, the former intervener was transferred to the Ministry of Defense, whose head (general Fernando Azevedo) . Braga Netto increased his leverage with his boss to the point that he was chosen as a candidate for vice-president on his re-election ticket.
For a general who lived with Braga Netto, the root of his and other military officers’ uncritical conversion to Bolsonarism is much less ideological than pragmatic, associated with power and money.
Asked to clarify the issue, a retired colonel who has worked with politicians and generals in different governments since redemocratization responded with an article narrating the fable of a guy who becomes fascinated with his neighbor’s wife and ends badly, as he is one of those “who they are dazzled by a power that is not theirs.”
