The Federal Court ordered the Army to adopt racial and social quotas in selection processes for the admission of students in military colleges across the country.
The decision was granted from a public civil action filed by the Federal Public Prosecution Service (MPF) against the military institution, on the grounds of a restrictive interpretation of the legislation to deny the reserve of vacancies to black, indigenous and disabled candidates.
According to the court decision, vacancies must follow the distribution proposed by the MPF in the action, based on the percentages provided for in the rules in force. At least 5% of vacancies in military colleges should be destined to people with disabilities, another 5% to quilombolas and 50% for elementary school students in public schools, a slice on which racial and social quotas also affect (with minimum of 77% of the vacancies of this group for black, brown and indigenous). The wide competition should be restricted to the remaining 40% of vacancies.
Candidates who choose to run for vacancies reserved for blacks, brown and indigenous people must present an ethnic-racial self-declaration. If approved in the tests and summoned, students will also have to go through a complementary heterohydict process to validate the information presented in the registration.
This stage, according to the formulation of the MPF accepted by the Federal Court, will be under the responsibility of a commission to be constituted even before the publication of the notice regarding the selection process. The group will be formed by members of the military colleges, the municipal and state education departments and the National Foundation of Indigenous Peoples (Funai).
To this day, the selections in the military colleges predicted only vacancies for wide competition. According to the MPF, the army’s refusal to adopt the rules has been based on a literal and improper reading of Law 12.711/2012, which established the reserve system of vacancies in federal education. According to the armed force, the standard would not cover military colleges by citing only higher education units.
The measure, in the MPF’s view, contradicts the Constitution and a series of laws and decrees that establish the obligation of quotas.
The judicial judgment recognized the origin of the arguments of the prosecutors who act in the case. Since military colleges are maintained with Union resources, they are subjected to the principles that govern policies to combat racial and social inequalities.
The Federal Court pointed out that the legislation, the jurisprudence and the constitutional guidelines on the subject are uncontroversial as to the requirement of quotas in the entire system of education linked to the Union. The application of the rules, emphasizes the judicial decision, independent of the classification of institutions.
“Although military colleges are constituted as differentiated entities and that their budget has distinct spring from educational institutions that make up the federal network, there are no rules that override the constitutional principles and the need to realize material equality,” said sentence of the 10th Federal Civil Court of São Paulo.
“If military colleges aim for the preparation for the future military career, the reserve of vacancies for minority groups represents a great opportunity to break with the sub-representativeness of these groups in various spheres of power, where historically was commanded by the elites. If, therefore, a forced change, that the course of a conservative and elitist state is not able to break, “the text concluded.
The report of Brazil agency He contacted the Army Social Communication Center (Ccomsex) to obtain a position of the corporation about the court decision, but there was no return until the publication of the text. The space remains open for manifestation.
