Brazil’s PSDB Party Confirms Support for President Temer

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL – Three days after Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) decided against annulling the 2014 Rousseff-Temer presidential ticket, President Michel Temer (of the PMDB party) saw his biggest ally, the PSDB party announce it would continue to support the administration.

“We will evaluate [the support] every day. Every day new facts have emerged and we will be watching,” acting national president of the PSDB, Senator Tasso Jereissati told reporters at the end of the party’s national executive meeting on Monday night.

The meeting which lasted more than six hours is said to have included heated debates between PSDB party members who wanted the PSDB to withdraw its support from the current Administration and those who said the withdrawal of support now would undermine the much needed political and economic reforms.

“The party is united, but it has divergences, the party has no owner, nor is it authoritarian,” said Jereissati. Acknowledging the contradiction of supporting an Administration that his party tried to oust, Jereissati told reporters that if it were up to him the PSDB would appeal the Supreme Court’s decision to approve the Rousseff-Temer victory.

“I, as president, think that we should appeal,” said the PSDB president, however adding, “We will continue supporting the Temer government without letting go of our convictions. I’m convinced that there was corruption in the 2014 election.”

The charges filed by the PSDB were of illegal campaign financing and an abuse of political and economic power, but the TSE voted on Friday 4 to 3 in favor of the sitting President Michel Temer, and recently impeached Dilma Rousseff.

The PSDB party heads four cabinet positions in the Temer Administration, including the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Secretary of Government, Cities and Human Rights and is one of the main allies of the current government in Congress.