Government prepares constitutional amendment to block the "revolving door" for military personnel in political positions.

Reuters - The Lula government is working on a proposal to prevent active-duty military personnel from running for elected office or even holding ministerial posts and subsequently returning to the Armed Forces, two sources following the negotiations on the proposal told Reuters.

If approved, the measure would prevent the "revolving door" for members of the Army, Navy, and Air Force from, for example, running for positions as federal deputy and senator and, in case of defeat, returning to their branch of service, as well as preventing an active-duty general from becoming a minister in a given government and returning to the barracks.

According to sources, the initiative aims to curb and reduce the politicization of the Armed Forces, which became evident during the government of then-President Jair Bolsonaro, a former Army captain who filled his administration with thousands of military personnel of varying ranks.

This measure could be a new point of friction in the clash between President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the military, who have a relationship of mutual distrust, but it was already expected. Lula harshly criticized their actions for failing to prevent and stop the invasion and destruction of the Three Powers headquarters by radical Bolsonaro supporters on January 8th.

Soon after the invasions, government ministers were already anticipating some kind of restraint on the excessive participation of the military in politics. This, in the government's view, was contaminating the atmosphere in the barracks.

At the time, the Minister of the Civil House, Rui Costa, stated that those defeated in the elections ended up returning to their posts as party activists, and no longer just as military personnel.

"He's no longer the same person who left to run for office. We need to rethink things, and Brazilian society and Congress need to redefine the parameters and guidelines," Costa said.

The proposal is being coordinated by the Minister of Defense, José Múcio Monteiro, who has already discussed the matter separately in recent weeks with Lula and the commanders of the Army, Tomás Ribeiro Paiva, the Navy, Marcos Sampaio Olsen, and the Air Force, Marcelo Kanitz Damasceno. According to one of the sources, Múcio received the commanders' approval to move forward with the initiative.

The idea is that this restriction for the military would be implemented through a proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC), an initiative with a longer processing time that will have to pass through Congress with the support in plenary of at least 308 deputies and 49 senators in two rounds of voting.

According to a source, a draft of the proposed constitutional amendment is being prepared by the legal department of the Ministry of Defense. The text is expected to stipulate that if a member of the military has 35 years of service, meaning they are eligible for retirement, they will go into reserve status if they run for elected office. If they do not have this length of service and wish to run for elected office, they will relinquish their military career – it is still under discussion whether there would be any salary loss or reduction as a result.

The proposal also aims to prevent active-duty military personnel from becoming government ministers and then returning to military service. The intention is that, if this happens, they would be discharged from the Armed Forces.

Two former ministers in Jair Bolsonaro's government would have been affected by the initiative if it had been in effect at the time: three-star general Eduardo Pazuello, who was Minister of Health and was elected federal deputy for Rio de Janeiro in October; and four-star general (the highest in the Brazilian hierarchy) Luiz Eduardo Ramos, who remained on active duty from the beginning of the previous administration while serving as Minister of the Government Secretariat and only left the position in July 2020.

"A military officer has every right to enter politics, but he has to leave the Armed Forces," one of the sources told Reuters.

The Defense Ministry is expected to send the text to the president next week, according to the source.

A high-ranking government source confirmed the discussion of the proposal. According to her, the text is being prepared by the Ministry of Defense, but will still be discussed by other areas of the government, such as the Civil House, the Ministry of Justice, and the Secretariat of Government. Only then, she added, will it be taken to Lula for final approval and to define how the measure will be presented.

According to sources, one debate is whether the PEC (Proposed Constitutional Amendment) will be presented by the government to Congress or whether some parliamentarian from the allied base will endorse the Executive's proposal.

The initial draft of the proposed constitutional amendment only includes restrictions on military personnel holding elected positions or ministerial roles. There are no restrictions—at least for now—preventing active-duty military personnel from holding positions of trust.

In this way, there would be no impediment, for example, to thousands of military personnel who held positions in the government, as occurred during the Bolsonaro administration. One of the most prominent cases was that of Lieutenant Colonel Mauro Cid, aide-de-camp to the former president, who became the target of investigations by the Supreme Federal Court.

According to the source, there is also no current discussion within the Ministry of Defense regarding a prohibition against military police officers, firefighters, and members of state public security forces running for elected office and, if unsuccessful, returning to their posts. This potential expansion of the PEC's scope could occur through amendments made by parliamentarians during its processing, the source said.

COMPREHENSIVE

Federal deputy Carlos Zarattini (PT-SP) is the author of a proposed constitutional amendment that is even more comprehensive than the one the government is preparing to restrict the participation of the military in politics. His proposal stipulates, among other things, that a member of the military would automatically be placed on reserve status if they occupy any civilian position.

"We need to definitively dispel this misconception that the Army, Navy, and Air Force are better equipped to govern. They have a professional activity: the defense of the territory and national sovereignty," he told Reuters.

Zarattini is collecting signatures so that the proposed constitutional amendment can proceed in the Chamber of Deputies. He said he has already obtained 70 of the at least 171 signatures needed for it to move forward and believes it will still take two months for this to happen. He also stated that he has not encountered any resistance from the Armed Forces, but it is an issue that, because it is not very popular, requires clarification for parliamentarians.

Nevertheless, the Workers' Party congressman sees it as positive that the government is also debating the issue. He stated that, up to this point, he has not been aware of any discussions to combine the processing of his proposed constitutional amendment with the one being prepared by the government.