Jose Sarney

Jose Sarney had spent his career in the party of the military regime and became the first civilian president after it because the man elected died before taking office. He was a lawyer, poet and novelist from Maranhao, elected federal deputy in 1955 and governor of his state in 1965, and rose through ARENA and then the PDS, the successive parties that supported the dictatorship, serving as national president of the PDS until 1984. When the regime's own candidate could not command the electoral college, Sarney broke away, joined the opposition ticket as running mate to Tancredo Neves, and was sworn in as acting president in March 1985 when Neves was taken to hospital the night before the inauguration; Neves died five weeks later and Sarney served the full term to 1990. He presided over the writing of the 1988 constitution, which is still in force and is the most expansive in Brazilian history on social rights. His economic record was the Cruzado Plan of 1986, a price freeze and new currency that produced a brief boom, won his allies a landslide in that year's elections, and then collapsed into inflation running above one thousand per cent by the end of his term. He was elected senator for Amapa afterwards, a state he had never lived in, and served as president of the Senate six times. He was elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 1980. His daughter Roseana was governor of Maranhao and his son a federal deputy, and the family's hold on the state has been a standing subject of Brazilian political writing. He moved the country to direct presidential elections, held in 1989 for the first time since 1960. He remained a senator until 2015, ending a parliamentary career of six decades. His novels and poetry are published under his own name and he has sat in the Academy for over forty years.

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