This isn’t entirely off-thread; please bear with me for a few minutes.
The Gol/Legacy accident – and later the TAM tragedy, gradually revealed some of the worst things about Brazilian politics, e.g. the way in which parastatal organisations like Infraero, the airports authority, are carved up to serve political parties in exchange for congressional support. They also helped shed some light on how the military have to share bedding with politicians to get the funding they require – or think they do.
Infraero went through several audits in 2007-8. Unsurprisingly, it was found to be riddled with corruption and the staff bloated with political appointees. The entire board was replaced – with new political appointees, new names to the same chairs.
Nelson Jobim took over as Defense Minister in 2007, a week after the TAM Congonhas accident. Since then my own impression is that he’s been mainly occupied with damage control, i.e. keeping the military off the front pages, and in working out arms deals.
Recently, though, something seems to have changed. Over the last few weeks the political appointees, all (or perhaps most – I haven’t checked the political affiliations) of them members of Jobim’s own PMDB party, have been dismissed and there’s a general management cleanup in process.
I’m not sure how to read this – it may be the air force reaction to the threat of airport privatization, “just get the politicians out of our hair and at least give us a chance to run the thing properly”. Whatever the reason, it shakes the system up and makes it a little more transparent, neither of which can be bad. Richard_Brasil will surely have a better view on what’s happening.