Reserve general Hamilton Mourao was named vice president of Brazil on Sunday night by far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, elected president with 55.7% of the vote. He is a staunch defender of the military dictatorship that raged in this Latin American country from 1964 to 1985.
Hamilton Mourao, chosen as vice-president by far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, elected Sunday president of Brazil, is a customary reserve general - as his leader - statements extremely controversial.
A year ago, well before being nominated as vice-presidential candidate on Jair Bolsonaro's ticket, General Hamilton Mourao had already made headlines. During an event organized by a Freemasons Lodge, he claimed that the army would be forced to "impose a solution" if the political situation of the country continued to deteriorate.
In February, during his departure speech of the army, he described as "hero" Colonel Brilhante Ustra, former chief of intelligence services under the military dictatorship and known torturer adulated by Mr. Bolsonaro.
Initially, Hamilton Mourao, 65, was far from being the first choice of the far-right candidate, who suffered several refusals.
Jair Bolsonaro was hoping to run another more widely recognized and consensual general, Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, former commander-in-chief of the UN mission forces in Haiti in 2004 and 2005. Unable to join the Bolsonaro ticket. because of the refusal of his party, General Heleno still participated actively in the campaign and is approached at the Ministry of Defense.
cumbersome
His leader was removed from the campaign for long weeks after being stabbed in full crowds on September 6, General Mourao found himself more often than expected in the front line, to the point of being considered somewhat bulky by the candidate's entourage.
Himself son of General, Hamilton Mourao was born in Porto Alegre (south), but his parents are from Amazonia and have Indian roots.
That did not prevent him from asserting at the beginning of August, during his first public appearance as Bolsonaro's running mate, that Brazil was plagued by an inheritance stemming from "the indolence of the Indians and the cunning of blacks" .
The general sparked a new outcry in mid-September, stating that single-parent families without a father figure were "non-integrated factories that tend to swell the ranks of drug traffickers . "
Dryly cropped
But what has especially wronged Bolsonaro is an interview in which the general insinuated at a conference that the 13th month of employees should be removed. It had been drastically cropped by Jair Bolsonaro, who blamed him for talking too much.
Similarly, according to Epoca magazine, the general had received last month many calls on his mobile phone senior officials calling him to "calm down" after remarks that a new Constitution may be necessary in Brazil in case of anarchy, a Constitution that would not be "necessarily elaborated by the elected representatives of the people" .
"It's a very personal opinion of Mourao," a magazine general said, referring to "a flash from someone who has no political experience . "
General Mourao also said, without any evidence that the man who tried to assassinate Jair Bolsonaro on September 6 "was from the PT," the Workers Party of Fernando Haddad. It was quickly established by the police that this man had acted alone and was not a member of the party founded by former President Lula.
In the rest of the campaign, the general spoke less, but still raised controversy on the eve of the first round.
Arriving with his grandson at an airport, the vice-presidential candidate said, "He's cute, did you see? The whitening of the race, " showing the little boy with skin lighter than him.
During the two rounds, he spoke only to defend the accusation of singer Geraldo Azevedo, who said at a concert last weekend that the reserve general had been one of his torturers. "He accuses me of torturing him in 1969. That year, I was 15, 16 years old and I was in college. I have never seen such a ridiculous lie , "he said Tuesday before the musician retracted.