Michel Temer
Michel Temer took the presidency from the woman he had been elected to serve and governed with the lowest approval rating ever recorded in Brazil. He was a constitutional lawyer, three times speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, and the leader of the centrist party that had supplied a governing majority to every president since the dictatorship without winning the office itself. He was Rousseff's vice-president for five years. His party abandoned the government in March 2016, and he presided over the impeachment that followed and then over the country. His programme was what his backers wanted and what the ballot box had twice refused. A constitutional amendment froze federal spending in real terms for twenty years. A labour reform in 2017 rewrote the code of 1943, weakening collective bargaining and ending the compulsory union levy. He cut environmental enforcement and opened protected land. The recession ended on his watch and the recovery was slow. He was recorded in 2017 by a businessman who taped a late-night conversation at the presidential residence, discussing payments to keep a jailed politician quiet. Prosecutors charged him with corruption, obstruction of justice and criminal organisation. A sitting president cannot be tried without the Chamber's consent, and he twice bought the votes to block it with amendments and appointments. His approval fell to about three per cent. He did not stand in 2018, and the vacuum his government left on both flanks - a discredited centre, a jailed former president, an electorate that believed the whole class was corrupt - is what the winner of that election ran into. Temer was arrested in 2019, released within days, and the charges have gone nowhere since.
- Lived: 1940 CE – ?
- Nationality: Brazilian
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
