By Jay Forte, Contributing Reporter
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – This week has shaken up senior political leadership in Brazil as one minister resigns and the senate leader Romero Jucá (PMDB-RR) announces that more changes are on the way. By Twitter, Jucá said that President Michel Temer is expected to switch 17 out of 28 ministers.
On Monday, the Minister of Cities, Bruno Araujo, handed over the post to President Michel Temer, and on Tuesday, Jucá wrote that it “precipitated” the debate on ministerial reform within the government.
The President of Brazil has recently reached record setting negative approval, with just three percent of respondents in September’s IBOPE Institute survey approving of Temer’s administration, while 77 percent disapprove.
Still senate leader Jucá wrote by Twitter, “The departure of the Minister of Cities precipitates the discussion of ministerial reform, given that there is a vacant ministry. […] It will be a broad reform, 17 vacant ministries within the deadline that the president determines. He will set the pace,” the senator tweeted.
The Minister of Cities, Bruno Araujo, resigned with a letter thanking President Temer for the confidence during his period but said that there is no more support within his party, the PSDB, to maintain the position.
“I am grateful for the confidence of my party, in which I have exercised all my public life, and there is no longer any support for it in the scale that allows this task to be carried out,” he said.
In the document, Araújo summarizes some actions of the ministry during its management and ends with a compliment to the Temer government.
“I am convinced, Mr. President, that the serenity of history will recognize in your government deeply positive results for Brazilian society. Receive my exoneration and my thanks,” concluded Araujo, in the letter, whose authenticity was confirmed by his advice.
Araújo is a federal deputy for the PSDB of Pernambuco and took over the ministry in May last year. In the same month after being linked to a plea bargain testimony of JBS owner, Joesley Batista, Araujo had already announced he would be leaving the government.
In April last year, eight of President Michel Temer’s cabinet members were accused of crimes of corruption and money laundering.