Temer Pledges to Battle Corruption Charges

The noose is still tightening for Brazilian President Michel Temer, whose political future grew even more uncertain on Monday after Brazil’s top prosecutor formally charged him with corruption. For now, though, the embattled president is pledging to fight on. The  Wall Street Journal :

Brazilian President Michel Temer  on Tuesday vowed to stay in power and fight the bribery charges filed against him, inflaming a bitter political divide in a country battered by successive corruption scandals.

Mr. Temer, who was charged by the country’s attorney general on Monday with accepting about $150,000 in bribes and agreeing to take about $11.5 million more, maintained his innocence and rejected the accusations as “fictitious.” He also disparaged the evidence—contained in a plea bargain by Joesley Batista, the former chairman of meatpacking giant JBS SA —saying it came from a “confessed bandit.”

“They want to stop the country, stop the government, in a political act, with fragile and precarious charges,” Mr. Temer said in a televised address, apparently referring to Attorney General Rodrigo Janot and his team of prosecutors.

Temer has now earned the dubious distinction of being the first Brazilian president to be formally charged with a criminal offense while still in office. But his current predicament is more notable for continuity than change.  The latest scandal marks three Brazilian presidents in a row—Lula, Dilma and now Temer—who have been under a cloud for corruption, as is virtually the entire political class. And as prosecutors expand the “Car Wash” probe, they are sure to ensnare even more politicians and further expose the profound rot of the political elite.

Temer might still survive the short-term leadership challenge, if his conservative support base in Congress follows through and votes against him standing trial. Whatever Temer’s fate, though, the bigger picture for Brazil is a troubling one: its political class appears irreparably tainted by corruption and unaccountable to the rising middle class it supposedly represents—and the scandal may not be finished quite yet.

A friendly reminder for Brazil, then, as a corruption scandal plunges it into political morass once again: republics without virtue do not last.

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