NYTimes | The new Brazilian president’s first pick for science minister was a creationist. He chose a soybean tycoon who has deforested
large tracts of the Amazon rain forest to be his agriculture minister.
And he is the first leader in decades to have no women in his cabinet at
all.
The government of President Michel Temer — the 75-year-old lawyer who took the helm of Brazil on Thursday after Dilma Rousseff was suspended by the Senate to face an impeachment trial — could cause a significant shift to the political right in Latin America’s largest country.
“Temer’s government is starting out well,” Silas Malafaia, a television evangelist and author of best-selling books like “How to Defeat Satan’s Strategies,” wrote on Twitter.
“He’ll
be able to sweep away the ideology of pathological leftists,” Mr.
Malafaia added of a conservative lawmaker whom Mr. Temer chose as
education minister.
For
more than a decade, Brazil has been an anchor of leftist politics in
the region, less strident than the governments in countries like
Venezuela and Cuba, but openly supportive of them and committed to its
own platform of reducing inequality.
But
parts of Latin America are now drifting away from the left after
elections in neighboring countries like Argentina and Paraguay. Mr.
Temer seems to be embracing a more conservative disposition for his
government as well, with the country’s business establishment pressuring
him to privatize state-controlled companies and cut public spending.
