New headache for Brazil's Rousseff: military

BRASILIA:  Growing list of people in Brasilia who are unhappy with President Dilma Rousseff, add a new group: the armed forces.

Rousseff's decision to appoint Celso Amorim a leftist career diplomat who oversaw Brazil's close relationship with Iran in recent years to the post of defence minister has angered a military that is already up in arms over meager resources and is pressuring the president for a larger budget.

Brazilian newspapers have lit up with off-record complaints from senior military officers since the bearded Amorim was appointed last week to succeed Nelson Jobim, who Rousseff sacked after he publicly disparaged fellow cabinet members.

"Since when do diplomats care about war? It's like sending a doctor to take care of a morgue," one senior officer was quoted as saying in Folha de S.Paulo newspaper.

Brazil's military has seen its influence steadily erode since a dictatorship ended in 1985, and it no longer poses an institutional threat to democracy.

Yet it remains critical in many areas, overseeing counternarcotics efforts on Brazil's porous border, helping with security in major cities like Rio de Janeiro, and participating in some public works projects such as a massive irrigation project in the poor northeast.

Unless Amorim can run an extremely tight ship, Rousseff may eventually need to increase the military's budget to defuse the complaints a tough move at a time when she is under pressure to control spending.

"To have meaningful defence you need soldiers that are well-fed and equipped. The president is aware of this," Amorim said in his first comments to reporters after taking office.

Rousseff, while still popular among most Brazilians, has struggled to handle a non-stop series of political disputes during her first year in office.

She has lost three cabinet members since May and faces fresh corruption allegations in the agriculture ministry. The biggest party in her ruling coalition, the PMDB, has been at odds with her since virtually the start of her presidency on Jan. 1 and has blocked much of her agenda in Congress.

"It seems we're in permanent crisis management. The situation with the military doesn't help," a source in the president's office told Reuters, asking not to be identified.

Brazil's military receives lower government spending as a percentage of gross domestic products than its main emerging market peers China, India and Russia.

Officers' spouses protested in Brasilia at the weekend, demanding an increase in pay and spending on hardware.

"There's no defence with scrap metal equipment," read one of the banners at the protest. Others demanded stiff pay rises.

Much of the armed forces' equipment is obsolete and many aircraft are grounded because of a lack of spare parts.

Rousseff earlier this year adopted a series of austerity measures to help control rising inflation and indefinitely suspended a hotly contested multi-billion dollar jet fighter contract

As foreign minister in the previous government of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Amorim favored France's Rafale plane.

Amorim spearheaded Brazil's diplomatic overtures to Iran last year, a move that angered Western powers.

The ruling Workers' Party, which he joined last year, also wants to approve a bill in Congress to set up a South African-style "truth commission" to investigate rights abuses during the 1964-85 military dictatorship.

Eager to contain rising discontent, Rousseff told the joint chief of staff privately that she would not seek to revise a 1979 law that granted amnesty for political crimes committed during military rule.

"She tried to reassure them the law wouldn't change," one Rousseff aide said on condition of anonymity.

Copyright Reuters, 2011