Will Brazil get its own Frank Underwood?

(Photo: Eraldo Peres – AP)

Amid growing chances that Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will be thrown out of office by congressional impeachment, it’s time to take a close look at her likely successor, Michel Temer, the man whom many call “Brazil’s Frank Underwood.”

Critics say that much like Frank Underwood, the character played by Kevin Spacey in the Netflix series House of Cards, Temer got his job as vice president of Brazil by winning the confidence of the president, then conspired in Congress to set the stage for Rousseff’s impeachment and become president himself.

Aged 75 and married to a 32-year-old former beauty pageant contestant, Temer is a former Speaker of the House, and was a congressman for more than two decades. As a leader of the PMDB party, Temer was invited by Rousseff to be her running mate in the 2010 presidential elections in order to win his party’s allegiance in the race, and has remained Brazil’s No. 2 ever since.

Like dozens of other members of Congress and politicians, Temer is also under investigation in the Lava Jato corruption scandal over illegal payments by the state-run Petrobras oil company to politicians from most political parties. Ironically, Rousseff’s impeachment process is not based on corruption allegations — although she is also being investigated for that — but on charges that she broke the law by manipulating the budget to make her government’s figures look better during the 2014 electoral race.

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