President Michel Temer shakes hands with Supreme Court Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski as Senate leader Renan Calheiros, center, looks on during Temer's swearing in ceremony. Aug. 31, 2016, Brasilia. AP Photo/Eraldo Peres. All rights reserved.
With a rom-pom-pom, the Brazilian Marine Corps brass band introduced the national anthem and brought a packed Senate to its feet. Scanning over a sea of bald heads, rarely interrupted by islands of crimson- or mauve padded shoulders, the TV Senado camera homed in on the vampiric figure of Michel Temer, whose lips barely curved as words escaped from the side of his mouth, as if in an act of ventriloquial deception. ‘But if thou raisest the strong gavel of Justice/Thou wilt see that a son of thine flees not from battle’.
Little more than two hours after senators had voted in favour of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff, in the very same chamber, Temer was officially instated as the new president of the republic. In the nearby Alvorada Palace, Dilma, vested in the red of her Workers’ Party (PT), surrounded by supporters, had already pronounced to a pack of journalists that she had been ousted by a coup d’état.
