Vice-President Mourão: ‘No Country Has Harmed Itself as Much as Brazil’

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The vice-president of Brazil, Hamilton Mourão, said he views the country on its path to chaos and that he sees no other place in the world that is “causing as much harm to itself as Brazil”, in a text he signs in the newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo, published yesterday. He blames other institutions and stands up for the federal government in the article.

According to the reserve general, the novel coronavirus pandemic is not only a health issue and has already become an economic one and “may become a security issue” at a time of “institutional damage”.

“The crisis it [covid-19] caused has never been, nor could it be, a matter that affects exclusively a Ministry, a Branch, a level of administration or a professional class. It is political in the sense that it affects the whole of society, and society, while politically organized, can only tackle it through state action,” he writes in the article.

Mourão says that Brazil is dealing with the pandemic in a “disorderly” manner, which is already having an impact on the economy. “The disorderly manner in which the social isolation measures were decreed has crippled the country’s economy, the threat of disorganization of the productive system is real, and the sharpest drops in Brazilian exports from January to April this year were in the manufacturing, automotive, and aeronautics industries, which generate the most wealth. Not to mention the unemployment disaster that is on the horizon”.

Without mentioning President Jair Bolsonaro, nor specific crises faced by his government – which has been clashing with the Legislative and the Judicial Branches – Mourão says: “No country in the world has an immediate solution for this scourge [covid-19], each one seeking to tackle it according to its reality. But none has caused as much harm to itself as Brazil. An institutional damage that had already been occurring, but which now has reached the brink of senselessness, is leading the country to chaos and can be summarized in four points”.

The vice-president then mentions the points: the political “polarization”, the “degradation of political knowledge”, the “impinging on the Executive Branch’s prerogatives” and “the resulting damage to Brazil’s image abroad”.

Regarding polarization, Mourão criticizes the press and says that “we have become unable to do what is fundamental to face any problem: sit at the table, talk and debate. The press, the great institution of opinion, needs to review its procedures in this calamity we are experiencing. Different opinions, contrary and favorable to the government, both on isolation and on the resumption of the economy, in short, on the handling of the crisis, must have the same space in the main media outlets. Without this we will be discredited (…)”.

In the second point, the vice-president criticizes those who “forget that Brazil is not a confederation, but rather a federation”, mentioning governors, magistrates and legislators who, according to him, operate above the federal government’s decisions.

In the third point, Mourão again criticizes “presidents of other powers” for seeking to play the role of President.

He mentions that ‘The Federalist Papers’ collection, in which one of its authors, James Madison, established “as basic foundations, on this basis, that the legislative, executive and judicial departments should be separate and distinct, so that no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time,” a rule shattered in Brazil today by the multitude of decisions of presidents of other branches of government, of judges of all instances and of prosecutors, who, despite not holding mandates of executive authority, attempt to exercise it”.

Finally, Mourão criticizes those who “use their prestige to draw hasty conclusions and point out Brazil ‘as a threat to itself and to others in the destruction of the Amazon and the worsening of global warming’, a frivolous accusation”.

“These points sum up a severe, yet not insurmountable situation, as long as there is a minimum of sensibility from the highest authorities in the country. (…) While the world’s major countries are organizing themselves to tackle the pandemic on all fronts, from health to production and consumption, here in Brazil, we remain relegated to selective statistics, discord, corruption and opportunism,” concludes Mourão.