Brazil’s president counterattacks after graft charge
BRASILIA: Brazilian President Michel Temer counterattacked 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 meatpacking company. He is also under investigation for obstruction of justice and belonging to a criminal organization.
But the center-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 Monday. However, hours earlier he had declared: “Nothing will destroy us — not me and not our ministers.”
For Temer to go on trial, the scandal-plagued lower house of Congress must first approve Janot’s charge by a two-thirds majority. Temer would then be suspended for six months for the trial.
Temer’s aides say they are confident he has sufficient support in Congress, where many lawmakers are themselves reeling from bribery and other corruption probes, to get the charges thrown out.
The Eurasia Group risk consultancy said there was still a 70 percent chance of Temer lasting to the end of his term through 2018.
“For most lawmakers, while there are now fewer incentives to openly support the Temer government, there are even fewer incentives to remove Temer from his seat,” Eurasia Group said.
Temer’s latest approval ratings are just 7 percent, lower than his deeply unpopular leftist predecessor Dilma Rousseff, whom he replaced last year after she was impeached by his congressional allies for breaking budgetary rules.
When he took over Temer promised to restore political stability and steer Brazil out of its deepest recession in history with market reforms.
Yet the political capital he needs for those austerity measures, including the hugely unpopular proposal to cut back generous pensions and to free up labor laws, is rapidly slipping away.
Currently, the lower house of Congress is lukewarm about bringing him down. There is no clear candidate to take his place on an interim basis before scheduled elections in October 2018, and many of the major figures in Congress are themselves battling corruption allegations.