The Brazilian Senate voted 61-20 to impeach suspended President Dilma Rousseff on Aug. 31. The decision will immediately shift the presidential mantle to Vice President and acting President Michel Temer, who will hold the position until Jan. 1, 2019. Though Temer will no longer be constrained by the impermanence of his leadership, his presidency will prove no less challenging in the months ahead. He will have to pass several unpopular economic measures while balancing a multiparty coalition that already has its eyes set on the 2018 presidential race, all while an investigation into the financing of his 2014 campaign with Rousseff unfolds.
The first policy package Temer will seek approval for includes a pension reform, which will establish a minimum retirement age and a cap on public spending. The latter — aimed at reducing Brazil's debt, which is expected to reach over 73 percent this year — is already being debated in Congress. Should it pass, it will be implemented as a constitutional amendment that limits growth in government spending to the rate of inflation. Meanwhile, the pension reform will also be crucial to reducing the Brazilian deficit, set to grow from more than $46 billion to $62 billion next year. Temer could also propose a labor reform in 2016 or 2017 in an effort to introduce some flexibility into Brazil's labor laws. But none of these measures sit well with the Brazilian public, and protests by social movements and labor unions are likely. Small, sporadic demonstrations by supporters of Rousseff's Workers' Party are also to be expected, though they will probably pose little threat to the Temer government.
At the same time, Temer will be forced to juggle the interests of the 11 political parties that belong to his Cabinet. Signs of disagreements within the ruling coalition have already begun to emerge: In August, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, one of Temer's biggest allies in Congress, expressed dissatisfaction with the government's proposal to raise the wages of employees in the judicial branch. The mounting tension can be partially explained by the fact that four of the coalition's parties, including Temer's own Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, plan to field their own presidential candidates in the 2018 election.
As if these problems were not enough, the Supreme Electoral Court will be scrutinizing Rousseff and Temer's 2014 campaign to determine whether accusations that the two received illegal funds are true. If, by the end of the year, the court finds that they are, the last presidential election would be nullified and a new election would be held. If such a ruling were to come in 2017, however, the president of the legislature's lower house would take charge of the country. Meanwhile, the corruption probe into Petroleo Brasileiro's activities has implicated Temer and two of his Cabinet ministers in the scandal. The former CEO of Odebrecht, Brazil's largest construction company, told authorities as part of his plea deal that Temer and his deputies secured illegal campaign donations two years ago. As he grapples with the fallout from these allegations over the next three months, Temer will be hard-pressed to show that he maintains enough support in Congress to push his unpopular economic measures through without widening the divisions within his coalition.
