Unpopular Brazil leader won’t seek another term
President Michel Temer endorses a low-polling candidate.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Acknowledging the unlikelihood of his reelection, Brazil’s deeply unpopular president said he wasn’t running and endorsed his former finance minister for the top office less than five months before voters in Latin America’s largest nation pick a new leader.
President Michel Temer’s decision on Tuesday to back former Finance Minister Henrique Meirelles came after months of weighing whether to run himself. Temer’s approval rating has consistently been below 10% — at one point it reached 3% — and mounting corruption allegations against him have frequently drowned out his government’s ambitious reform agenda.
“Meirelles is the best of the best,” Temer said, standing next to the former finance minister at an event in Brasilia put on by Meirelles’ Brazilian Democratic Movement party.
In his short speech, broadcast by Globo TV, Temer acknowledged his chances of reelection were slim.
“I am realistic. I know what I did and what I did not do” in office, he said.
Temer was vice president when he moved into the top office in 2016 after President Dilma Rousseff was impeached and removed for illegally managing the federal budget.
While overseeing a handful of reforms, including a rewriting of labor laws, Temer’s government has suffered numerous scandals.
Temer himself has been charged with corruption in two cases by the country’s attorney general. Congress’ lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, which has the power to approve prosecution of a sitting president, voted twice last year to shield Temer from being put on trial. He could still be tried in those cases once he leaves office at the end of this year.
More recently, federal police have been investigating whether Temer used family members, including his young son, to launder illicit money by buying real estate and doing renovations.
Temer has strongly denied wrongdoing, denouncing the investigation as “criminal persecution.”
Despite his woes, Temer had repeatedly signaled this year that he was considering a run for office in October’s national election. Last week, he even appeared to be in campaign mode as he celebrated the accomplishments in his two years of government, including a reduction in inflation and revival of state oil company Petrobras.
Meirelles, who recently stepped down from his Cabinet post to run for president, was also central bank president during the administrations of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a time of strong growth in Latin America’s largest economy.
Although he doesn’t have the corruption baggage of Temer or several other presidential hopefuls, Meirelles has struggled to gain traction in the polls. The most recent Datafolha poll, released last month, said only 1% of those survey expressed intent to vote for him.
The overall poll leader is Lula, who was jailed last month for a corruption conviction and is barred from running.