BRASILIA: Brazil entered a new era as interim President Michel Temer took power from suspended leader Dilma Rousseff, installing a business-friendly government that ends 13 years of leftist rule in Latin America’s biggest nation.
The center-right former vice president wasted no time in putting his stamp on Brazil, naming a new government he said would restore “credibility” after months of economic and political turmoil.
One key nomination was a respected former central bank chief, Henrique Meirelles, for finance minister, with the task of helping the huge economy claw out of the deepest recession in decades.
“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.
“It is urgent to restore peace and unite Brazil,” said Temer, 75, who at one point lost his voice while addressing allies and a crush of journalists.
Temer offered an olive branch to Brazil’s left, which accuses him of having engineered the impeachment process to mount a coup. He vowed “dialogue” and promised to maintain the generous social programs run by Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, lifting tens of millions of people from shocking poverty.
However there was immediate criticism of the fact that the new cabinet consists entirely of white males — a dramatic shift from the more diverse cabinet presided over by Brazil’s first female president.
“It’s a government of white men and quite frightening,” said analyst Ivar Hartmann, a public law expert at the FGV think tank in Rio de Janeiro. “It’s the first time since the (1964-1985) dictatorship that there has not been a single woman. This is worrying.”
The center-right former vice president wasted no time in putting his stamp on Brazil, naming a new government he said would restore “credibility” after months of economic and political turmoil.
One key nomination was a respected former central bank chief, Henrique Meirelles, for finance minister, with the task of helping the huge economy claw out of the deepest recession in decades.
“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.
“It is urgent to restore peace and unite Brazil,” said Temer, 75, who at one point lost his voice while addressing allies and a crush of journalists.
Temer offered an olive branch to Brazil’s left, which accuses him of having engineered the impeachment process to mount a coup. He vowed “dialogue” and promised to maintain the generous social programs run by Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, lifting tens of millions of people from shocking poverty.
However there was immediate criticism of the fact that the new cabinet consists entirely of white males — a dramatic shift from the more diverse cabinet presided over by Brazil’s first female president.
“It’s a government of white men and quite frightening,” said analyst Ivar Hartmann, a public law expert at the FGV think tank in Rio de Janeiro. “It’s the first time since the (1964-1985) dictatorship that there has not been a single woman. This is worrying.”
