The military gets stronger.

By Alex Solnik, from Journalists for Democracy

One of the consequences of this never-ending saga involving Bolsonaro and Mandetta was the explicit revelation that the four generals closest to the president are having the final say on the most important matters of the Republic, wielding even more influence than the three crown princes, which is quite an achievement under the current circumstances.

It was they who, two Mondays ago, blocked the imminent dismissal of the Minister of Health, a sign that they, unlike most ministers, can contradict the president and even make him change his mind.

They were also the ones who, yesterday, gave the green light for Mandetta to be fired, because they understood that by giving an interview to "Fantástico" he broke the hierarchy.

Since the Palácio do Planalto (Presidential Palace) is, at this point, more of a headquarters than the heart of the civilian government, the rules that apply there are military rules, and breaking hierarchy is a mortal sin, since a soldier only has two things to do: obey those hierarchically above him and command those below him.

Now, the one who's becoming this small in this whole crisis is Bolsonaro.

It's no longer possible to deny that he depends on the four generals in the Planalto Palace to make fundamental decisions, and everyone knows that a boss who needs the approval of a subordinate to fire another subordinate isn't a boss, he's a subordinate of his subordinates.

Things are therefore going from bad to worse for the supposed head of the Brazilian state, who began his downfall by becoming a poster boy for a drug he presented as a panacea (as all poster boys do), but whose performance in Brazil and the world shows that, in some cases, it helps to save lives, but in others, it helps to kill.

Besides treading on this swampy ground, which no world leader dares to tread (Trump hasn't touched the subject in a long time), Bolsonaro lost political muscle by exposing himself and others to contamination, on more than one occasion, staging unprecedented scenes in the entire civilized world.

Another sign of weakness is that he can't impose his command on the fight against the virus (which is totally stupid, of course) nor on his Minister of Health, and at the same time he doesn't send him home.

Of course I don't like this strengthening of the generals, even though they are more intelligent, cultured and less lunatic than the president, because military life is incompatible with political life, the two do not coexist, one ends up imposing itself on the other, and we know which of the two has more "arguments" to impose itself.   

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