SPOOKY MANSION
Brazil president moves out of official home after experiencing sleepless nights
PRESIDENT Michel Temer blames bad vibes and even ghosts for driving him from his sumptuous official residence in the capital Brasilia, a news weekly reported on Saturday.
Temer surprised politics watchers this week with the revelation that he has decamped from the Alvorada Palace, and moved with his former beauty queen wife and 7-year-old son down the road to the smaller vice-presidential residence.
The Alvorada, which means “dawn”, and was designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer, would be a dream home for many. It has a huge pool, football field, chapel, medical centre and a vast lawn.
But Temer, 76, and his wife, Marcela, 33, find the cavernous, glass-fronted building spooky.
“I felt something strange there. I wasn’t able to sleep right from the first night. The energy wasn’t good,” Temer was quoted as saying by Veja.
“Marcela felt the same thing. Only (their son) Michelzinho, who went running from one end to the other, liked it. We even started to wonder: could there be ghosts?”
Globo newspaper said Marcela brought in a priest to drive out any evil spirits, but to no avail.
The Temers then moved to the still luxurious, but smaller, Jaburu Palace nearby. Temer knows it well. This was his residence when he served as vice-president until last year, when then president Dilma Rousseff was impeached for breaking budget accounting laws.
No one filled the vice-presidential post, meaning he can now take his pick of palaces.