Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s choice for the Ministry of Defense, José Múcio, has asked to meet with Jair Bolsonaro, with whom he shares a common past. «There is not the slightest problem. In democracy we have to respect the opposite. He doesn’t need to be an enemy,» he has said.
«Bolsonaro has been a colleague for twenty years. I always talk to him. When he lost the elections, I went to greet him,» revealed Múcio, who also asked to meet with his predecessor from January, Paulo Sérgio Nogueira, as well as with the rest of the commanders of the Armed Forces.
In his first statements as future Defense Minister, Múcio stressed that «there is not the slightest problem» and that Bolsonaro can only be an «adversary» and not an enemy. «He knows who I voted for,» he said, reports ‘O Globo’.
«I’m going to talk to the current commanders next week. I have a good relationship with all of them,» stressed Múcio, who assured that the transfer of power will be «very easy», as «if it were a military walk».
«The more peaceful, the easier for those who are leaving and the easier for those who are arriving,» said Múcio, whose appointment was already praised by Bolsonaro when it became known that he might arrive at the Ministry of Defense. «It’s a good name,» he said according to sources close to the Alvorada Palace.
Múcio and Bolsonaro were colleagues inside the Chamber of Deputies during a stage of the long career as a parliamentarian of the still president of Brazil. The new Minister of Defense was a federal deputy for Pernambuco between 1991 and 2007 for three different parties, all of them conservative.
This did not prevent him from becoming head of the Secretariat of Institutional Relations under Lula’s second government. In 2009 he was nominated for a position as a judge of the Union Court of Auditors.
Múcio is one of the five names that Lula da Silva has advanced this Friday that will be part of his government. Along with him, he also announced the heads of Finance, Fernando Haddad; Foreign Affairs, Mauro Vieira; Civil House, Rui Costa; and Justice, Flávio Dino. The president-elect said that this Monday he will unveil some more ministers of the new cabinet.
