RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – The man who may become Brazil’s next president is almost as unpopular as the leader facing impeachment now, and stained by scandals of his own.
Vice President Michel Temer, who hasn’t won an election on his own in a decade, is famed as a backstage wheeler-dealer, and detractors say he’s leading the plot to replace his boss, embattled President Dilma Rousseff.
The lower house of Brazil’s Congress voted on Sunday to impeach Rousseff and if the Senate agrees to consider the measure, she’ll be suspended while a trial is conducted.
That means Temer would take over during the trial and possibly through the end of Rousseff’s term in 2018 – assuming he can avoid ouster himself.
He signed off on some of the allegedly illegal budget measures that led to the impeachment drive against Rousseff and has been implicated, though never charged, in several corruption investigations.