Brazil’s President Rejects Calls to Quit Amid New Corruption Claims -<br />By SIMON ROMEROMAY 18, 2017<br />RIO DE JANEIRO — President Michel Temer of Brazil defied calls to resign on Thursday as an exploding scandal over claims<br />that he authorized the payment of hush money to a jailed ally engulfed Latin America’s largest country.<br />“The president of the republic is no longer in any condition to govern Brazil.”<br />Calls for Mr. Temer to step down multiplied on Thursday across Brazil’s political establishment, after a report by Globo, the country’s most powerful media group,<br />of a secret recording in which the president endorsed bribes paid to silence Eduardo Cunha, an imprisoned politician who helped orchestrate Ms. Rousseff’s ouster.<br />Still, Mr. Maia could serve as president for only 30 days, according to Brazil’s constitution, after which<br />Congress would elect a new president to serve the remainder of Mr. Temer’s term, which lasts through 2018.<br />Critics of the beleaguered president have been organizing street protests calling for direct elections, a prospect feared by some allies of Mr. Temer over the potential for figures like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a leftist<br />and former president, to capitalize on the political tumult<br />Mr. Temer, with approval ratings hovering around the single digits, had even expressed fury at the end of 2016 after one of his cabinet<br />ministers secretly recorded their conversation, accusing the president of pressuring him to help an ally in a property deal.<br />Brazil’s currency, the real, fell sharply against the dollar and stocks plunged in a sell-off punctuated by fears<br />that Mr. Temer would be forced to step down or find himself politically paralyzed, effectively stalling the president’s ambitious agenda of pushing broadly unpopular austerity measures through Congress.
