Brazil’s president counterattacks after graft charge

BRASÍLIA: Brazilian President Michel Temer prepared to counterattack on Tuesday after bribery charges against him sent Latin America’s biggest country into its latest bout of political turmoil.

The first sitting president of Brazil to face criminal charges, Temer is accused of accepting bribes from a giant meat packing company. He is also under investigation for obstruction of justice and belonging to a criminal organisation.

But the centre-right president has made clear he does not intend to let the scandal — part of a huge corruption probe engulfing scores of politicians — drive him from office.

Leading newspapers Folha de S. Paulo and Globo quoted aides saying that Temer’s strategy would be to attack Janot’s evidence against him as flimsy and politically motivated.

“For personal reasons, the prosecutor general is putting the country at risk and mounting a political crusade,” Folha quoted a presidential aide as saying.

“The president is moving to the phase of total war to save his mandate,” the newspaper’s columnist Bernardo Mello Franco wrote.

Temer himself has not commented since Janot filed the charge with the Supreme Court late on Monday. However, hours earlier he’d declared: “Nothing will destroy us — not me and not our ministers.” — AFP