When federal deputy Amom Mandel (Cidadania-AM) was born in 2001, Brazil’s currency was already the Real, in some homes in the country the internet already existed and it was already possible to search on Google. Today, at just 23 years old, Amom is the most proportionally voted federal deputy in the country, coming in second place in polls on voting intentions in the race for mayor of Manaus (AM), behind the current mayor David Almeida (Avante).
A poll by the Instituto Paraná Pesquisas published in mid-November last year shows Amom with 23.3% of voting intentions, around 15 percentage points behind current mayor David Almeida (Avante). Diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) since he was 14, Amom launched his pre-candidacy for mayor of Manaus last week, at an event in the Cidade Nova neighborhood in the north.
When the congressman received the diagnosis, the disorder was still known as “Asperger syndrome”, a name abandoned in the latest edition of the DSM, the guide of the American Psychiatric Association. According to him, in his case the disorder manifests itself with a certain difficulty in relationships, a slightly tied tongue and a certain deficit in motor coordination. The Amazonian politician is accompanied by a speech therapist, in addition to the psychologist.
Is it possible for an autistic person to be mayor of a capital like Manaus, which has 2 million inhabitants? Ammon has no doubts. “Not only is it possible, but it is time for Brazil to prove it. I am sure that being autistic does not diminish my abilities, compared to anyone else. On the contrary. Obviously, not all autistic people are the same. There are autistic people who have language deficits, which have learning deficits. But all of them can be overcome with proper treatment,” he says. “People today in Brazil have a lot of prejudices against people with autism. I want to break down this prejudice,” he says.
The politician also states that his young age would not prevent him from being a good mayor: Manaus has the fifth highest GDP among Brazilian capitals, but suffers from problems ranging from the lack of basic sanitation to the actions of criminal factions, such as the Vermelho Command (CV). “England has already had a young prime minister, in his twenties (William Pitt, who took office at the age of 24. He held office from 1783 to 1801 and from 1804 to 1806). Several countries have already had experiences with young leaders. It has already been more than proven that age does not necessarily mean competence,” he says.
This year’s election campaign will officially begin on August 16. But the attacks have already begun, Ammon says. “They had already spread misinformation networks that I would be hospitalized in serious condition and that my family was worried about my mental and physical health. Due to alleged autoimmune diseases and the problem of autism. This does not exist. It does not this is “how politics is done”, he says.
Isolation at school
Amom is the son of a judge of the Amazon Court of Justice, a professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco and an IRS auditor. Jewish, he was born in Recife (PE), but moved at the age of 4 to Amazonas, the homeland of his mother who at the time had just passed the exam for the judiciary and was sent to work in Japurá (AM) , on the border with Colombia. Amom divided his time between Manaus, where he studied, and the city where his mother worked. “It’s an hour’s flight (from Japurá) to Manaus. There are communication difficulties. At that time (2006), there wasn’t even a telephone in the city. In fact, there was a landline,” he says.
“I divided my childhood between sometimes staying with her there in Japurá and staying in Manaus, where I studied. This imposed even greater isolation on me. I had no psychological support in that period, I had nothing. I also went through depressive crises due to this isolation. I didn’t understand, then, why I had no friends and couldn’t make friends at school”, he describes. When she received the diagnosis, everything started to make sense. “At the age of 14, a psychologist gave me this diagnosis (ASD). I also underwent a follow-up with other professionals, such as neurologists, who ordered other imaging tests. And they concluded that what was then called Asperger’s syndrome existed. “, tells .
“I need a speech therapist. You may notice that sometimes I have a little difficulty in the language, I don’t have much motor coordination, sometimes I don’t understand irony. And some other things. Since I entered politics, I have improved a lot , really a lot, because I started to have much more intense monitoring than before the candidacy”, he explains. “After I entered politics, I discovered what made me get out of bed every day. What made me want to live,” she says.
Councilor in Manaus and the campaign goes viral
Before politics, Amom participated in volunteer activities. “At the age of 12 I did my first volunteer job. He was at Wikimedia, responsible for Wikipedia,” he says. In 2020, still 19 years old, he was elected city councilor in Manaus. There he discovered that the City Council was “subservient” to the municipality. “Everything that we wanted to monitor and demand transparency, when it arrived at the Chamber, the grassroots councilors (allies of the mayor) overturned it. They didn’t let us monitor it. They didn’t even open up the possibility of having any explanation from the city hall,” he says.
In the 2022 elections, Amom was the most voted candidate for deputy in the country, in proportion to the state’s votes: he obtained 288,555 votes, or 14.5% of the valid votes that year. Part of this success is due to the campaign video that went viral on the Internet. In the play, which lasts only a second, Ammon simply says “drink water.” According to him the idea was to transform the small space into a piece of public utility.
“Cidadania had, in total, 10 seconds, and when we divided the daily time among all the candidates, it gave 1.16 seconds for each. In one second, there was no time to talk about proposals or anything. But, at the same time, I didn’t want, as in all other election programs, to waste voters’ time. I wanted to bring some useful message,” he says.
“We thought we’d turn these commercials into a public service message. There were three options. Drink water was the first. Then we aired ‘wear your seatbelt’. And the third, which didn’t air, was ‘use a condom.” It was for sex education, but I didn’t want to be misunderstood, that people would think I was joking,” she says.
“I don’t do politics to make friends”
The same difficulty in making friends experienced during school days exists today, compared to the other 512 representatives and 81 senators who make up Congress, Amom admits. “This difficulty (in making friends) continues. But I’m not in politics to make friends,” he says.
“There are many difficulties in relationships, especially with older political deputies, who do not accept… not just a young person, but a young neurodivergent person in the National Congress. But much more than debates and reports, I learned that most of the deputies of Congress does not influence the agenda, the order of the day. Nowadays, it is a very chaotic process that decides the laws in our country”, he says.
“Since I entered there has never been an ordinary session in this legislature. All sessions are extraordinary, set at the last minute, without the majority knowing what the agenda is. We need an intelligence network among councilors to know what the agenda is. In practice, since there are few people in power here, I don’t need to interact with so many people to advance our bills,” he explains.
Source: Terra
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