Brazil: Lula da Silva to remove 8,000 military commissioned positions if elected

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party – PT) said on April 4 that he intends to remove “almost 8,000 military personnel who are in office” if he assumes the Presidency of the Republic. The PT member said that more difficult than winning elections this year would be “undoing the dismantling of institutions” carried out, according to him, by the government of Jair Bolsonaro.

“We are going to have to start the government knowing that we are going to have to remove almost eight thousand military personnel who are in positions, people who did not take part in competitive examinations,” said Lula da Silva during a meeting of the National Board of Directors of the Central Workers Union (CUT).

A 2020 survey by the Federal Audit Court (TCU) shows that the number of military personnel occupying civilian positions in the federal government has more than doubled. According to the report, the number of military personnel – both active and reserve – increased from 2,765 in 2018 to 6,157 in 2020.

A Power360 survey conducted the same year using the Access to Information Law data says that 8,450 reserve military personnel work in ministries, commands, and military courts.

At the same event, the former president said that the election of deputies would be at the center of PT’s strategy for this year’s elections. With a growing governing base in the House of Representatives, Lula said that even if he wins this year’s elections, if the left does not have a strong base in Congress, it will be difficult for an eventual government to advance on important agendas for its base.

“We have an almost heroic task. A revolutionary thing. Which congressmen will be elected in the city where we live? How will we not let crooks be elected? How will we not let the right have a majority?

The former president also mentioned the new configuration of the Congress after the changes made during the partisan window. According to the PT, the parties have become “cooperatives” of deputies. “What counts is the distribution of the electoral fund,” he said.

Lula’s relationship with Congress was marked by the mensalão scandal, a scheme to buy congress members’ votes that threatened to bring down the first PT government in 2005. The revelation by Roberto Jefferson (PTB) that congress members were paid a kind of monthly allowance to vote in favor of the government’s projects became a criminal case tried by the Supreme Court in 2012 – 25 defendants were convicted.

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