The Minister of Defense, José Mucio, visited President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva at his home in the Pinheiros neighborhood, in the capital of São Paulo, this Tuesday morning (17). According to him, Lula is doing great and moving around. They talked about the arrest of reserve general Braga Netto and the project that changes military pensions.
“He wanted to know what the environment was like in the Forces [Armadas]. Obviously this was something that was already expected. There is a constraint on the esprit de corps of each force, but this was to be expected. We hope that all those involved will face justice”, said Mucio.
He stated that the climate in the Armed Forces is “very good”. “I mean, like I said, they’re embarrassed, they were colleagues, they studied together. He’s the first four-star general to be arrested in the Army, but it wasn’t a surprise to anyone.”
“But it is necessary, it needs to end for us to look forward and to remove suspicion from the innocent. I say that everyone entered into this with their CPF and we have to preserve the CNPJ of the three forces”, he said.
Military PL
According to the minister, in relation to the Military PL, there is not much left to discuss. “Go to the plenary [da Câmara] and then we will adapt.”
José Mucio said that the difficulty in dealing with military retirement is that career promotion is like a procession. “If you stop one in front, you stop everything behind.” Currently, there is no minimum age for military retirement, and the PL establishes the minimum age at 55 years old, with the new rule applying from January 2032.
“We have to see how to adapt this because otherwise you will have what they call pooling, there will be some positions that will be pooled somewhere, or a lot of colonels when they don’t need them, or a lot of majors or a lot of captains. That’s it. We will adapt, it has to be a slow thing, because the career is very long”, he explained.
Regarding requests from the military in relation to the PL, he said that more time was requested so that there would not be such a pile-up. “But the government preferred to rush and we will adapt.”
“I don’t know what Congress will do. Congress is very independent and very divided. We have a conservative Congress, let’s see how this will happen,” he said.
Asked if it was very difficult to get the military to accept the proposal presented, he replied that “there was a lot of talk” and that the ministry will defend the bill.
According to José Mucio, President Lula told him that he should return to Brasília this Thursday (18) and will meet with ministers on Friday (19). “He didn’t say what it would be like [a reunião ministerial]but that he will meet us on Friday”.
* Article amended at 1:09 pm to add information
