“We Are Committed to Restoring Confidence in the Country and Its Institutions” A Conversation with His Excellency Hamilton Mourão Vice President of the Federative Republic of Brazil BRAZIL INSTITUTE | APRIL 9, 2019 A Conversation with His Excellency Hamilton Mourão, Vice President of Brazil Paulo Sotero: Good afternoon to you all. Brazil and completing his secondary education, Welcome to the Wilson Center. We are honored Vice President Mourão enrolled in the military to have the Vice President of Brazil, Hamilton academy of Agulhas Negras. He served in the Mourão, with us today for his first public event in Brazilian Army as an officer for forty-five years, Washington, D.C. as vice president. Since joining including as military attaché in Venezuela and a UN the government, Vice President Mourão has peacekeeping mission in Angola, and rose to the emerged as a moderating voice in Brasília, and rank of four-star general before retiring in 2018. someone who supports civil dialogue, freedom of expression, and the rights of the press inscribed He is one of the eight former senior military in the Brazilian Constitution. As you all know, officers currently serving in the government. As providing a forum for nonpartisan and open debate I welcome Ambassadors Sérgio Amaral [and] on pressing global issues is our core mission here Fernando Simas, Ambassador Luigi Einaudi, I at the Wilson Center, and there are many pressing wanted to express, Mr. Vice President, that it issues for us to discuss today, from the role of is my pleasure to welcome you to the Wilson the military in a democracy to the ongoing crisis Center. Please, the floor is yours. in Venezuela and Brazil’s domestic and political challenges. We look forward to hearing the Vice Vice President Mourão: Dear Paulo Sotero, President’s thoughts on these and other topics. Director of the Brazil Institute of the Wilson Center, I would like to greet the audience We are also pleased to discover that the Vice attending this event. Ambassador Sérgio Amaral, President has an early connection with Woodrow Ambassador of Brazil to the United States, ladies Wilson. In the early sixties, when his father, an and gentlemen. The official visit of President Jair Army officer, served in a military inter-American Bolsonaro to Washington three weeks ago raised commission in Washington, Vice President expectations for the strengthening of relations Mourão attended the Woodrow Wilson High between Brazil and the United States. In the past School, right here in northwest D.C., for the first couple of days, participating in events in Boston semester of his freshman year. After returning to and in Washington, I heard many encouraging * The Vice President’s remarks have been lightly edited for clarity. A video of the speech and Q&A that followed is available at: www.wilsoncenter.org/program/brazil-institute. 2 comments from politicians, businesspeople, and transnational threats such as terrorism, professors and students. I have been able to see cyber war, drug trafficking, epidemics, illegal important players turning their eyes and ears immigrations, organized crime, environmental towards Brazil with confidence that our country is and climate catastrophes, are all around us. The getting back on the right track. information society cannot be confined within our national borders. Social networks became On that note, I want to thank Paulo Sotero for part of everybody’s life, but those channels and organizing this event. I believe that the Brazil technologies are also used for wrongdoing. So- Institute, as the only think tank in D.C. exclusively called globalization brought efficiency, information dedicated to Brazil, has an important role in and comfort; but unfortunately it also allowed advancing understanding about the agenda of hate, intolerance, and violence to spread more reforms presented by our administration, and how easily through our societies, right under the nose that agenda will enable our country to reap more of existing institutions. benefits from closer cooperation with the United States and other strategic partners. Such flows are faster than our capacity to provide political response, and governments seem to Within two days, on April 11, we will complete be facing critical challenges everywhere. Even 100 days in office. The date will offer an international trade governance is now under threat as opportunity to take stock of what has been a commercial war is taking place, and many countries achieved so far, while also allowing us to set a are starting to protect their internal markets. course for the future work. We know that there is still a long way ahead, and our duty will only be Latin America, in turn, is still searching for accomplished on January 1, 2023, when President itself, trying to break out of its peripheral logic. Bolsonaro and I will hand over power to the next Our region wants a better place on the great elected government. By then, I am confident that geopolitical chessboard of globalization and we will have taken decisive steps to enable Brazil global value chains. We are still great exporters to fulfill its manifest destiny as the largest and of primary goods, with very low added value. most vibrant and prosperous democracy in the To make it worse, many countries in the region Southern Hemisphere. are still under the influence of colonial dogmas, and of people who believe that the Cold War has From the outset of our administration, we not ended, and defend ideas that went wrong acknowledged that the Brazilian economy is not everywhere else. Venezuela is an emblematic in tune with current times, and that our public example of the destruction that the so-called institutions are still very far from the needs and socialists can do. Late President Chávez wishes of our people. The global context has been conducted a process of conquest of power using deeply transformed by the economic and political the democratic instrument of elections and a new reforms adopted in the late seventies and early constitution that gave him full control over the eighties. The triumph of neoliberal ideas, coupled state. His death showed that he did not have a with a scientific and technological revolution, brought substitute, and Mr. Maduro is simply completing to life what has been called globalization. The impacts the disruption of the country. of those reforms were magnified by unprecedented development of information and communication What of Brazil? This colossus, with continental technologies, resulting in an international dimensions, [is] incredibly rich, but it seems it environment of greater instability and competition. wants to be the eternal “country of the future.” Due to governments that believed that the state Today all nations, even the most developed should do everything, we walked into a terrible ones, are kept in a permanent state of alert. The political, economic, and social crisis. We have speed of change makes the new look older in been cut down by the incompetence of the the blink of an eye. Conflicts appear everywhere, political leaders, by the inefficiency of the public “From the outset of our administration, we acknowledged that the Brazilian economy is not in tune with current times, and that our public institutions are still very far from the needs and wishes of our people.” 3 “commissioned positions,” which are open for non-career appointments and therefore were part of the give-and-take game of old politics. To attack the main problems linked to the economy and public security, Mr. Paulo Guedes and Mr. Sérgio Moro were chosen. Both ministers, within their fields of competencies, have already presented legislative proposals that are critical for the future of our nation. As part of our priorities for the first 100 days, the pension reform, the anticrime/anticorruption bills were submitted for the consideration of Congress. Several projects were also presented from other sectors of the administration, but we have clarity that the priority now is the pension reform, followed by the anticrime and anticorruption package. On the economic side, the two main structural problems for the Brazilian economy are low economic growth and the deterioration of public accounts. Each of these problems is deeply rooted from years of economic mismanagement, and our response will need to combine different measures in order to have lasting impacts. For the productivity agenda, we should highlight the tax system reform, the opening of the economy to trade, privatization, and the reform of our educational system. We need to remove the state burden from the back of those who produce. The fiscal consolidation, in turn, will be achieved by a combination of the social security system reform, freezing public sector wages, the reduction of administration, and by the cancer of a compulsive fiscal subsidies, and other measures as the corruption. Leftist governments turned their liberation of the mandatory expenditures and backs on market freedom, and opened their arms nonrecurring revenues. to embrace crony capitalism. That process was interrupted with the impeachment of President On February 20, President Bolsonaro personally Dilma Rousseff, and most decisively with the handed over the pension system reform bill to the election of Jair Bolsonaro as the president of Brazil. presidents of the Chamber of Representatives and the Senate, in a political gesture that illustrated Bolsonaro was elected in a wave of indignation, the priority given to that reform. We are now and a vigorous movement to rescue our country, working to have the pension reform bill approved our pride, our values. First and foremost, we in Congress, but obtaining the necessary votes are committed to restore the confidence in the is not an easy task. Party fragmentation poses a country and its institutions, so we can resume challenge for any political system, and in Brazil we the path to our social and economic development.