Temer is also vulnerable to the swirling scandal at state oil company Petrobras, which has snared top members of both his party, the PMDB, and Rousseff’s PT.
Advertisement
Temer himself has been implicated – though never charged or arrested – in the Petrobras probe. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have no jobs while businesses continue to shut down.
Meirelles said the central bank president will keep the right to be tried only in the Supreme Court even after the bank loses its cabinet status, and said that right will be extended to the entire central bank board. Last month, she said she might take her case to Mercosur, the South American trade bloc.
Brazil’s acting president has held his first official Cabinet meeting after vowing the new team will try to rescue the country’s plunging economy at a moment of profound political confrontation.
“We must significantly improve the business environment for the private sector”, Temer said in the presidential palace just hours after Rousseff left, amid emotional scenes, to start her six-month suspension pending an impeachment trial on charges that she broke government accounting rules.
In the interim, Vice President Michel Temer will temporarily assume the presidency. Speaking hours after the Senate voted to suspend her on Thursday, R…
“I may have made mistakes but I did not commit any crime”, she said, according to Reuters.
Rousseff, 68, said the action was a coup.
She was suspended for 180 days pending a trial in the senate. He insisted the programmes would be maintained and “perfected” under his leadership.
The new government will be in stark contrast to the administration of Ms Rousseff who had called herself in Portuguese “presidenta” instead of the gender neutral “presidente”, and who had spoken of citizens as being “Brazilian women and men”.
He dismissed tax increases, however, saying “the tax burden is already high”. El Salvador’s El Diario de Hoy notes that among those leftists leaders calling for his removal was a young Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, predecessor to Dilma Rousseff as head of state.
The dismissals appear to open the way for Rousseff’s Vice President Michel Temer to swear in his own Cabinet as early as Thursday.
Brazil’s vice president Michel Temer has become acting president after Dilma Rousseff was suspended from office following a decision by the senate to put her on trial for breaking budget laws.
“What we have today in Brazil is (on the one hand) a temporary government, an interim government, and (on the other) a president elected by 54 million people”.
“My first priority is called the Rio de Janeiro Olympics”, Jungmann said following his appointment. Like the suspended president, he also has an impeachment challenge lodged against him.
Ms Rousseff denounced her removal as a “farce” and “sabotage”. He also says she’ll receive a salary, though he didn’t specify what it would be.
Advertisement
Juca is from the opposition Democratic Movement Party, the main motor behind the impeachment.
