Bolsonaro needs to find a role for Mourão urgently.

By Helena Chagas, in Divergent and for the Journalists for Democracy - President Jair Bolsonaro may have made a big mistake by not giving his vice president, General Hamilton Mourão, a concrete role, perhaps even a ministry. With rare exceptions—and Marco Maciel and José Alencar are exemplary among them—vice presidents without specific tasks spend their days listening, talking, gossiping, and one fine day it turns out they are conspiring. Sometimes it works, as in the case of Michel Temer. Even when it doesn't, it can be very disruptive.

At the beginning of the transition, Mourão even announced that he would have management functions, heading a supposed government coordination center that would supervise and demand action from the ministries. So far, nothing similar has been given to him. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), the vice president continues to give lectures to investors and businesspeople and interviews to journalists to talk about what will happen from January 1st onwards.

In Friday's edition of Valor, he shows his full potential for damage in an interview with announcements and opinions that were certainly not coordinated with Bolsonaro or Paulo Guedes. Rightly so, Mourão says that the pension reform should not start from scratch with a new proposal sent to Congress, but rather use Michel Temer's project that is already underway. This is not, however, a firm decision of the government nor consensual within the economic team, and the vice-president's words may end up causing a clash even before the inauguration.

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In the same interview, Mourão dangerously slipped up on a subject that usually leaves the market and economists scratching their heads when he defended, after the approval of the reforms, a negotiation with investors to extend the deadlines for the internal debt – something that will certainly keep some people awake tonight if it is not quickly denied.

The general, who once defended reforming the Constitution without Congress, committed another gaffe related to the Legislative branch when defining its composition: "You have there — as in any other social group — 30% who are truly enlightened, you have 40% who are the 'middle class' that goes wherever the wind blows, and another 30% who don't even know where the A-curve is." Mourão may not be lying, but coming from the vice president, these words will do nothing to help build a solid parliamentary base.

Perhaps the only justification for the president-elect's lack of reaction to the vice president's activities is that old strategy of giving someone enough rope to hang themselves. After all, the new statements about renegotiating the debt act as a bucket of cold water on sectors of the market and nervous elites who, in recent times, had begun to sympathize with Mourão and consider his positions more reliable than Bolsonaro's...

Still, it's possible that General Mourão will receive some kind of mission from Captain Bolsonaro in the coming days.

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