Publisher: Great hit, Raul Jungmann?

President Michel Temer (PMDB) has just repealed the decree authorizing the presence of the Armed Forces in the federal capital, under the guise of the Guarantee of Law and Order, which was originally scheduled to expire on 31 May. The political scene has been aggravated by the presence of military forces in Brasilia, which is under a political impasse that has not yet been resolved, after the compromising audiences between the president and the owner of the J & F group, Joesley Batista, have leaked. As our political system is generally quite fragile, it could not escape this rule when it comes to dampening the bumps or seismic quakes frequent in the plain. And you see that these bumps are absurdly frequent, if we look carefully at our Incipient democratic experience.

Starting with the inability of our elites to accept the rules of the democratic game, marked by many uncertainties as to its results. Not even in the more progressive governments were their privileges attained, but even so, the simple recognition of the exercise of citizenship downstairs would suffice for their more recent "unrest", culminating in these rearrangements of conservative forces, Who appropriated a legitimate mandate, won at the polls, with 54 million votes of Brazilian voters. If, at that moment, the economic problems bothered, today they add to them political instability and a bad crisis of governability. Among the commitments of this "new" arrangement that assumed power, a radical neoliberal agenda, frankly favorable to the dictatorship of capital, undermines the constitutional rights and guarantees of the citizen, culminating in a complete destruction of the welfare state.

Remaining of the deep sleep that produced the monster of democratic retrogression, at some point the population would react to these maneuvers, for the absolute absence of any other institutional alternatives, since the parliament and the judiciary are also compromised by the wheels that grind our representative democracy. We are not here defending breaches or damages to the public patrimony, but noting the fact that, with popular mobilizations alone, this picture can be reversed. It is necessary that the population demonstrate their dissatisfaction and disapproval to the measures and reforms that are being discussed in the parliament. These mobilizations fulfill the role of "sensitizing" part of this political system, especially those strata that depend on the popular vote to maintain their positions. Care must be taken, however, not to accommodate the opponents of democracy, who can see in the excesses good reasons for a hardening of the regime.

Every time I read or listen to a statement by Defense Minister Raul Jungmann, I feel something dubious in the air, which should keep people of democratic convictions in mind. At first, what is known - at the level of the official justifications - is that President Michel Temer would have called for the presence of the Armed Forces from the finding that there were not enough regular police to contain the possible disturbances caused by black Bloc infiltrated among the popular protesters. After stating that it was a great success to call the military, Mr. Raul Jungmann, in an interview with a radio station here in Recife, tried to justify the call of the military, under arguments not very convincing. I am going to report to you, Mr. Raul Jungmann, a comic strip from the dark days of 1964, which ought to stand by those Brazilians who, in fact, have some commitment to democracy:

"Although linked to ARENA, Pedro Aleixo was the only civilian who, during a ministerial meeting, manifested himself in a civic and vehement way against the agency of Institutional Act No. 05. Vice de Costa e Silva, because of his impediment, it was natural that Aleixo took over, but the military kept him under house arrest until the post was extinguished, carrying out a coup within the coup. Instigated to pronounce on the subject, Aleixo would leave a celebrated phrase about those days, that were foreshadowed, as fact "I do not trust the guard at the corner." The rest of the story is known to everyone, "he said.