Federal Intervention: Brasília vs Rio de Janeiro
On Sunday (08 January 2023) hundreds of supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the headquarters of the National Congress. In response to the terrorist attack, President Lula decreed Federal Intervention in the security of the Brazilian capital.
Brazil has done one more trick on us. But not the country, it was some fanatics who have now become terrorists responsible for the biggest attack on Brazilian democracy in history. Without entering party issues or questions of guilty and punishment, I come to talk about the immediate presidential measure: the Federal Intervention in the Public Security of the Federal District (Brasília). Those who know me know that I became a master with a dissertation on the Federal Intervention in the Security of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Therefore, this announcement of the second Federal Intervention in Brazil and in the same area has caught my attention.
It has about the same administrative area (security), it has the same constitutional legal support with the same description of motivation (“to put an end to the serious compromise of public order”). However, the similarities do not go much further. For starters, the main one is the difference in the choice of the intervenor. For Rio de Janeiro, in 2018, then-President Michel Temer established in a decree that the position would be military and designated an Army commander. In 2023, there was no such delimitation and the position, which is of an administrative quality, will be held by a civilian. We certainly won’t see actions with military tanks on the streets of Brasília, something common in Rio de Janeiro during the intervention.
In Rio, the idea was to give the image of a military intervention, when in fact, it was a measure provided by law, with the transfer of the administration of a certain area of the state administration to the federal administration. Just as is now happening in Brasília. The difference was to decree that the post of State Security Intervenor in Rio de Janeiro would be of a military nature. Since then, what we saw were military operations in urban areas, record deaths and no type of administrative improvement in the area of public security.
Another question is time. Rio had its security under intervention between February 16 and 31 December 2018. In Brasília, initially, the intervention will last 23 days. The goal described in the documents is the same, remember? But the actions and their focuses, certainly will not be. I believe that what happened in Brasília justifies the act because one must ascertain what is happening in the security administration of the Federal District, to correct mismanagement and change drivers. Unlike what I think for Rio de Janeiro, where the measure was undoubtedly used for political and electoral purposes.
