Brazil’s new rulers: Rich, white, conservative, in legal trouble
BRASÕLIA ( AFP) — The two dozen ministers in Brazil’s new government have a lot in common: they’re white, male, conservative, often wealthy and in numerous cases face legal problems.
The question — after coming to power through the suspension of leftist president Dilma Rousseff rather than a presidential election — is whether they have enough in common with their country of 204 million.
Interim President Michel Temer held his first Cabinet meeting Friday, 24 hours after assuming power in the wake of a Senate vote opening a trial against Rousseff on charges that she broke government accounting rules.
And his government vowed immediately to turn the page on the Rousseff era, saying that opposition street protests over the last year demanded an end to corruption, political paralysis and recession.
“People went on the street to seek two things: they wanted a state without corruption and they wanted an efficient state,” chief of staff Eliseu Padilha said. “Out with corruption and in with efficiency.”
Team Temer ’ s businessfriendly credentials might suggest efficiency but on corruption the new government is hardly a model.
At least three ministers are being investigated in the vast probe into an embezzlement and bribery ring at state oil company Petrobras, perhaps the biggest corruption scandal in Brazilian history. They include key player Romero Juca, the planning minister and head of Temer’s party the PMDB.
Another three new ministers are facing other criminal probes, the specialist website
Congresso em Foco, which tracks lawmakers’ legal troubles, reported Friday. And two more ministers are the sons of politicians being investigated in the Petrobras probe.