Military chiefs' grumbles grow at president's choice of minister

TO THE 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 left-wing career diplomat who oversaw Brazil's close relationship with Iran in recent years - as defence minister has angered a military that is already up in arms over meagre resources and is pressuring the president for a larger budget.

Some officers have been wary of Rousseff from the start, due in part to her background as a left-wing guerrilla in the 1960s. And that grumbling has become much more public since last week, when Rousseff sacked the previous minister for publicly disparaging fellow cabinet members and replaced him with the bearded Amorim.

"Since when do diplomats care about war? It's like sending a doctor to take care of a morgue," one unnamed 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 counter-narcotics efforts on Brazil's porous border, helping with security in major cities such as Rio de Janeiro, and participating in public works projects, including a massive irrigation project in the poor north-east.

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 who are well-fed and equipped. The president is aware of this," Amorim said after taking office.

Complicating matters further: Rousseff's own past, which saw her imprisoned and brutally tortured by the military government in the 1970s. While all parties say they have moved on, mistrust lingers.

In sum, the trouble opens up a new front for a president who is still popular among most Brazilians, but has struggled to handle political disputes in her first year in office.

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

Brazil's military receives lower government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product 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.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 multi-billion-dollar jet fighter contract.