With barely 3 days in office, the acting president Michel Temer has already given signs of the political agenda he intends to implement. A political agenda completely different from the one chosen by the polls in 2014, the polls that made him vice-president.

When the PMDB decided to split with the PT's government (conveniently a month before the impeachment voting at the Lower House), it would be expected that its leader - and Vice-president of the Republic - would also step down. As a moral obligation and accountability for the more than 54 million voters who chose a certain political agenda. His decision to remain as Vice-president has no other explanation than political convenience. And yet this has not been widely criticized.

A central figure behind the impeachment process, the now acting President is cynically implementing a highly conservative agenda, opposite to the one that got him elected. Just to mention a few measures of the government in the making, there are no women, African descendents (which comprises more than half of the Brazilian population), indigenous peoples, or any other "minority" in Temer's cabinet of Ministers. They are all white men. 7 of them are under corruption investigations. Temer himself is a "Ficha-suja", recently condemned by the Superior Electoral Court and therefore barred from running for elections in the coming 8 years. This is supposedly the government that takes office to fight widespread corruption.

The newly nominated Minister of Planning, Romero Jucá, is the congressman who presented a bill to change the current legislation on slavery, in order to restrict its definition. The newly nominated Minister of Agriculture, Blairo Maggi, has received the honorable "golden chainsaw" award by Greenpeace for his contribution to deforestation in the Amazon. The newly nominated Minister of Justice and Citizenship - which will now include also Human Rights - is the former Security Secretary of São Paulo, who recently ordered the forceful removal of young student demonstrators who were pacifically occupying schools. And the list goes on...

Nonetheless, the mainstream media has voiced little criticism of the acting president, in sharp contrast to its sensationalistic criticism of Dilma's government. Instead, they prefer to reverberate the call for "unity and stability" of the acting president, that suddenly became more important than the fight against corruption.

Not even the decision to extinguish CGU, the State independent body for the control and oversight of the Government, submitting it to the political veil of a Ministry, was commented by those journalists who so strongly denounced corruption.

This scenario exposes the fact that the impeachment process - highly motivated by corruption scandals which involve all political parties - has nothing to do with the fight against corruption. It unveils the fact that it's about a political struggle orchestrated by the traditional political elites, who have been allied to the PT government until yesterday but had a different program and saw an opportunity to oust the president. A political maneuvering, dissociated from the popular demand. It's about changing the program of government, which has prioritized the poor and most vulnerable population, at the discontent of traditional groups, in a shamefully unequal society.

Perhaps many Brazilians who demanded the impeachment of Dilma - tired of corruption and of a devastating economic crisis - thought they were just changing from an unpopular president to an inexpressive one. But recent facts reveal that they completely changed a governmental program and a country's vision without going to the polls.

In this sense, judicially we can debate if this process is legal; but we cannot deny, it is illegitimate.

http://www.inesc.org.br/news/2016/may/the-interim-victory-of-a-defeated-political-agenda