Scandal-tainted dealmaker may be the next president
The man who may become Brazil’s next president is almost as unpopular as the leader facing impeachment now, and stained by scandals of his own.
Vice-president Michel Temer, who hasn’t won an election on his own in a decade, is famed as a backstage wheelerdealer, and detractors say he’s leading the plot to replace his boss, embattled President Dilma Rousseff.
The lower house of Brazil’s Congress voted on Sunday to impeach Rousseff and if the Senate agrees to consider the measure, she’ll be suspended while a trial is conducted.
That means Temer would take over during the trial and possibly through the end of Rousseff’s term in 2018 — assuming he can avoid an expulsion himself.
He signed off on some of the allegedly illegal budget measures that led to the impeachment drive against Rousseff and has been implicated, though never charged, in several corruption investigations. The son of Lebanese immigrants, Temer is one of the country’s least popular politicians, but has managed to climb his way to the top, in large part by building close relationships with fellow politicians as leader of the large but fractured Brazilian Democratic Movement Party.
While the 75-year-old’s reserved manner has earned him the nickname of “butler,” he is not without flash. His wife is 32-yearold Marcela Temer, an ex-beauty pageant contestant who tattooed Temer’s name on her neck.
Critics, and there are many, say Temer is anything but a statesman simply looking out for the future of his nation.
“Captain of the coup,” former Finance Minister Ciro Gomes called Temer, using the term used by Rousseff to describe the impeachment process.
And amid months of political manoeuvring on all sides, one incident involving Temer stands out as bizarre: a 13-minute audio of him rehearsing an inauguration speech days before the impeachment vote. Temer said it was “accidentally leaked”.