Brazilian leader vows to quit politics after term ends

SAO PAULO: Brazilian President Michel Temer has pledged to retire from politics after he leaves office.

Temer also insisted in an interview that he has not made any mistakes in office since his predecessor Dilma Rousseff was impeached last year.

The 76-year-old Temer vowed he will not seek re-election and will deliver promised austerity measures before leaving office. His term ends the last day of 2018.

A recent Datafolha institute poll says just 9 percent of Brazilians approve Temer’s job performance. That figure is lower than Rousseff’s was when she was forced from the presidency.

Temer’s reputation has been tainted by corruption allegations in the ongoing probe into bribes paid by the Petrobras oil company. He still faces a trial that could remove him within weeks.

Former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, meanwhile, said in a separate interview that politicians caught up in a sweeping three-year graft investigation are unlikely to return to their positions of power.

Cardoso included Brazil’s former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the frontrunner in early polls for next year’s presidential elections despite facing five corruption trials, as among those whose political careers have likely been destroyed by the kickbacks probe.

“It is unlikely that the people touched by the corruption scandal will return to the leadership they once had,” said Cardoso, a founder of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB), which backs the current center-right government.

Cardoso, himself facing accusations in the investigation, also said the profound cultural and constitutional changes now needed to truly clean up Brazil’s system will take time.

Brazil’s biggest graft investigation, known as “Operation Car Wash,” has turned up evidence of corrupt practices as recently as June, suggesting political kickbacks at state companies carried on despite the detention of scores of powerful businessmen and politicians.

“Car Wash has played a very important role in Brazil because it lifted the lid, which was necessary. But that will not resolve things immediately. It is a process,” he said.