Michel Temer

Michel Miguel Elias Temer Lulia was born in Tietê, São Paulo, in 1940 to Lebanese immigrants. He graduated in law from the University of São Paulo, taught constitutional law and served as São Paulo's public security secretary before entering Congress in 1987. He presided over the Chamber of Deputies three times and led the PMDB for years. Elected vice president on Dilma Rousseff's ticket in 2010 and 2014, he broke with her in 2015 and took over when the Senate suspended her in May 2016, becoming president in August. He did not seek reelection in 2018. He holds no public office, but he remains a member of the MDB and in October 2026 publicly endorsed Senator Flávio Bolsonaro in the presidential runoff.

Supporters credit Temer with pulling Brazil out of a deep recession, restoring fiscal credibility with the spending cap, modernizing labor rules and reforming state companies such as Petrobras. Critics, including the Workers' Party, regard his rise as the result of an illegitimate impeachment and argue that the spending cap and labor reform cut social protections and workers' rights. His approval ratings fell to single digits. In 2017 the Prosecutor-General charged him twice, with passive corruption and with obstruction of justice and criminal organization, after a recorded conversation with businessman Joesley Batista, but the Chamber of Deputies voted both times not to allow the cases to proceed. He was briefly arrested in 2019 in a Car Wash investigation and released days later. Courts later acquitted him in the main cases against him.