Michel Temer

Michel Miguel Elias Temer Lulia (Portuguese pronunciation: [miˈʃɛw miˈɡɛw eˈliɐs ˈtẽmeɾ luˈliɐ]; born 23 September 1940) is a Brazilian lawyer and politician who is the 37th and current President of Brazil. He took office on 31 August 2016, after the impeachment and removal of his predecessor Dilma Rousseff, having served as Vice President since 2011 and as Acting President since 12 May 2016, when Rousseff was suspended from her presidential powers and duties to face the controversial impeachment trial. At 75 years and 11 months old, he is the oldest person to assume the office.
On 31 August 2016, the Senate voted 61–20 to convict the impeached President Dilma Rousseff and remove her from office. Such procedure allowed a political shift from a center-left to a center-right government. Temer succeeded to the presidency, to serve out what would have been the remainder of Rousseff's second term until 1 January 2019. In his first speech in office, Temer called for a government of "national salvation" and asked for the trust of the Brazilian people. He also signaled his intention to overhaul the pension system and labor laws, and curb public spending.

Born in Tietê, São Paulo, Temer is the son of Nakhoul "Miguel" Elias Temer Lulia and March Barbar Lulia, Maronite Lebanese immigrants who migrated to Brazil in 1925. His parents, along with three older siblings, immigrated to Brazil from Btaaboura, in Northern Lebanon, to escape famine and instability due to World War I. In Brazil, his parents had five more children, and Temer is the youngest. Temer does not speak fluent Arabic, but is able to understand the subject of a conversation in that language.

In his childhood, Temer dreamed of being a pianist. His dream, however, could not be accomplished, as there were no piano teachers in his city. As a teenager, he wanted to be a writer. After failing chemistry and physics classes in his first year of high school, he gave up the "curso científico," which prioritized hard sciences and math. In 1957, he moved to São Paulo to finish the high school in the " curso clássico", composed mainly of subjects in the humanities and languages.

In 1959, he followed the footsteps of his four older brothers and joined the Law School of the University of São Paulo, getting his degree in 1963. In his freshman year, he became involved with politics by becoming a treasurer of the school's students' union. In 1962, Temer ran for the presidency of the union, but he was defeated by 82 votes.

Temer stayed neutral before the 1964 coup d'état. With the beginning of military rule, he moved away from politics. In 1974, he completed a doctorate in public law at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo.

Raised Maronite, an Eastern Catholic sui iuris particular church of the Roman Catholic Church, Temer confirms his affiliation as a Roman Catholic.

In 1968, Temer began lecturing on constitutional law at PUC-SP, where he also taught civil law and was director of the postgraduate department. He was also director of the Brazilian Institute Of Constitutional Law and member of the Ibero-American Institute of Constitutional Law.

Publications

Temer published four major works in constitutional law. His most famous book is Elements of Constitutional Law. It was published in 1982 and sold over 240,000 copies. The book focuses on the organization of the Brazilian State, especially on the functioning of the three powers.

His book Democracy and Citizenship, published in 2006, highlighted the relevance Law and included some of his speeches as a federal deputy. In his works, he showed himself to be a supporter of parliamentarism and a political recall system, while opposing economic interventionism and tax increases.

However, he considered himself a writer only in 2013, when he published Anonymous Intimacy, a book of poems. It consists of 120 poems, many of which were written on napkins during his plane trips between São Paulo and Brasílla. Temer said writing poems helped him recover from the "barren arena of legislative politics".

Beginning in 1987 Temer served six consecutive terms in the Chamber of Deputies, and on three separate occasions served two-year terms as President of the Chamber (in 1997–1998, 1999–2000 and 2009–2010). Temer was also a member of the 1988 National Constituent Assembly, which promulgated the current Constitution of Brazil. Politically he rose to become chairman of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), the largest party in Brazil.

Temer campaigning with Dilma Rousseff in 2010.

Temer with U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at the Itamaraty Palace in Brasília, 11 October 2013.

He is the second Vice President of Lebanese origin, after José Maria Alkmin. His family originates from the town of Btaaboura in Koura District, neighboring the city of Tripoli in Northern Lebanon.

Investigations

According to official government documents published by Wikileaks, Temer provided information to the U.S. Embassy in Brazil since 2006. Temer is described as gaining the loyalty of lower class Brazilians by strengthening social programs and being opposed to Lula da Silva. The report has the status "sensitive but unclassified" with Temer stating that Lula da Silva "might finally begin to heed his friends on the left" and would "be led away from the orthodox macro-economic policies that have dominated his first term".

Impeachment process

Temer's impeachment process began with the decision on 6 April 2016, by the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, to form commission for termination analysis of liability for crime offered by attorney Mariel M. Marra. Four other requests for impeachment were presented to Cunha. On 17 May 2016, the Minister Marcos Aurélio allowed the impeachment request to enter the agenda of the Supreme Federal Court plenary session.

Role in the impeachment process against Dilma Rousseff

In 2015 and 2016, Temer was involved in controversy as Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process unfolded. In December 2015, Temer sent a letter to the president complaining about his distance from government decisions. The letter began with the Latin proverb "Verba Volant, Scripta Manent" (spoken words fly, written words remain). Temer described the communication as “personal,” and a means of unburdening himself about various complaints against the president. He said Rousseff had made him look like a “decorative” vice president rather than an active one, despite having been invited to support her government several times in the dialogue with Congress, a role he only accepted in 2015.

The letter has been commented on and mocked on Brazilian social media, with images depicting the vice president as a Christmas decoration, making fun of his use of Latin, and photos purporting to show the president laughing while she reads the missive, among many other things. The president's office had no immediate comment on the images, but Rousseff had condemned him as a traitor to her administration.

Later, in April 2016, an audio file of Temer was leaked to the media. In it, Temer speaks as if the impeachment process had already been confirmed and he was the new president. “I don’t want to generate false expectations,” Temer said on the recordings, which were first published by Folha de S. Paulo on 23 May. “Let’s not think that a possible change in government will solve everything in three or four months.”

The leak came just hours before a special lower house committee was scheduled to vote whether to back the request to impeach the president, generating complaints and accusations of treachery and lack of support from a vice president conspiring against the elected president. Temer alleged it was sent incorrectly to a WhatsApp group of his party's representatives in Congress.

Acting President

Vice President Temer holds his first cabinet meeting as Acting President at the Planalto Palace, 13 May 2016.

In the early hours of 12 May 2016, the Federal Senate voted to accept President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment indictment and, therefore, Vice President Temer assumed the presidential powers and duties as Acting President. In accordance with the rules set by the Brazilian Constitution, Temer would be Acting President for a maximum of 180 days. During that period, the Senate had to decide whether to convict President Rousseff and remove her from office (in which case, Temer would become President for the remainder of the term) or to acquit her of the crimes of responsibility charges (Rousseff would have her presidential powers and duties restored to her). Temer is awaiting a decision from the Supreme Federal Court to start an impeachment process against him.

On his first day as acting president, Vice President Temer appointed a new cabinet, reducing the number of ministries from 31 to 22. Women's rights and Afro-Brazilian rights activists criticized the fact that all of the appointed ministers were white men, for the first time since 1979.

On 2 June 2016, Temer was declared ineligible for the 2018 election.

On December 2016, Marcelo Odebrecht confirmed paying bribes to President Temer.

President

Michel Temer during his inauguration in the National Congress, 31 August 2016.

Temer with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Hangzhou, China, 2 September 2016. China is Brazil's largest commercial partner.

After the impeachment conviction and resulting removal from office of Dilma Rousseff, on 31 August 2016 Michel Temer succeeded as President of Brazil. His term finishes on 1 January 2019. In October 2016, the Constitution of Brazil may be amended by deputies and the public spending may be effectively frozen for twenty years, being only adjusted for inflation. This matter is being subject of both praise and criticism among the Brazilian middle-class.

In November 2016, Marcelo Calero, Temer's former Minister of Culture, resigned and alleged that Temer had pressured him to help an ally, Geddel Vieira Lima, the government secretary, who had invested in a development that was being delayed by a heritage preservation measure by allowing construction to go ahead in spite of said measure. Vieira Lima resigned on 25 November 2016, and opposition leaders stated that they would seek President Temer's impeachment over this incident. Temer denied the corruption allegations but admitted talking to Calero about the project.