GENERAL ORLANDO GEISEL, the brother of a military president during Brazil’s dictatorship of 1964-85, once remarked: “It’s very easy to get the army into politics. The difficult thing is to get it out afterwards.” That is the problem the country’s generals now face. They embraced Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain of hard-right views elected as president in 2018. With Mr Bolsonaro now in trouble, the army is trying to distance itself from him. The strains showed in the resignation of the commanders of the three armed forces on March 30th following a cabinet reshuffle.
Several retired generals campaigned for Mr Bolsonaro; one is his vice-president. The cabinet is stuffed with military officers. Their alignment is partly ideological—the army came to hate the left-wing Workers’ Party of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and liked Mr Bolsonaro’s call for order and security. But it is also opportunistic. Around 6,000 military folk have government jobs. The forces have received wage increases and were exempted from a money-saving pension reform.
Mr Bolsonaro, a covid-19 denier, is now on the defensive. He has grossly mishandled the pandemic. He got away with that politically last year by forging an alliance with the centrão, a bloc of pork-barrel politicians he once excoriated, and by giving generous emergency payments to 68m Brazilians. But with finances tight, the aid stopped in December; it has now restarted on a smaller scale. Mr Bolsonaro’s approval rating has fallen below 30%. And the pandemic is still raging: a record 4,211 deaths were reported on April 6th. To the army’s embarrassment, Eduardo Pazuello, a general, was in charge as health minister from September until last month.
Allies are turning against the president. Business now complains that the government’s foot-dragging on vaccine procurement is delaying economic recovery. The centrão secured the firing of the Trumpist foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, for his failure to buy vaccines; the group’s leader, Arthur Lira, the speaker of the lower house of Congress, has hinted at Mr Bolsonaro’s possible impeachment. Courts are investigating his politician sons. And the Supreme Court suspended Lula’s conviction for corruption, making him a formidable potential opponent in 2022. “What was an open pathway to a second term will now be very contested,” says Matias Spektor of Fundação Getulio Vargas, a think-tank. “He’s preparing for a political crisis.”
Mr Bolsonaro is now demanding loyalty from “my army”. He said it would not enforce pandemic restrictions imposed by state governors. General Fernando Azevedo, the defence minister, disagreed and was sacked; he said he had “preserved the armed forces as institutions of state”. His replacement, General Walter Braga, is of a similar outlook to his predecessor. Since he is junior in years of service to the outgoing commanders their resignation was, in a narrow sense, a reflection of the military principle of hierarchy. But it also sent a political message. This was reinforced by the appointment of General Paulo Sérgio Nogueira as the new army commander. He was not Mr Bolsonaro’s first choice; he has overseen the army’s own, relatively successful, anti-covid-19 effort and has made veiled criticisms of the government.
The high command have two big worries. One is reputational damage. They know that the public views their association with the government negatively, says a former officer. “They are desperate to recover their image.” The other is the growing split between constitutionalist commanders and bolsonarista retired and junior officers.
What raises the stakes is the spectre of Mr Bolsonaro in 2022 trying to ape the attempted insurrection against defeat by supporters of Donald Trump (which Mr Bolsonaro and his sons cheered on). The tacit message of the past fortnight is that the army would not support an attempt at election-stealing. But the police might. A police commander close to the president is the new justice and security minister. Mr Bolsonaro’s family has ties to paramilitary militias; he has issued decrees loosening gun controls—to arm his base, say his critics.
If the race is tight the army could find itself having to choose between defending the man it naively embraced, or backing the constitution and thus having to repress his supporters. This would risk the split in its ranks that wiser officers are desperate to avoid. Having made their bed with Mr Bolsonaro, the armed forces may find themselves lying in it uncomfortably for years to come.