The president of , Marconi Perillo, invited () to join the party and be a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic in 2026.
According to the leader, the former president said he was flattered by the invitation and promised to think about the possibility. “He is an experienced man, who has demonstrated managerial and administrative capacity. He is a diplomat. Brazil needs to break this radicalization. He would be a person to bring temperance.”
Perillo’s invitation to Temer was made in the same week as the one, one of the few major additions to the party after one that led to the acronym’s emptying, including that for other parties —Eduardo Leite (RS) and Raquel Lyra (PE) for PSD and Eduardo Riedel (MS) for PP.
The tendency is for Ciro Gomes to be a candidate for the .
According to Perillo, the deputy (PSDB-MG), who will take over the party next month, had already invited Temer previously, which he reinforced this week.
Wanted by SheetTemer did not respond, but the change of party is viewed with skepticism by emedebistas. One of the terms used by his allies to describe the movement is “illogical”.
Asked about which other parties could make up Temer’s MDB ticket, Perillo said that this would be a conversation for a second time.
Perillo also stated that the PSDB has always been in opposition to PTism and that it would be important for the party to have a candidate for the Presidency, as occurred in the elections until 2018 (when Geraldo Alckmin, now in the PSB, was a defeated candidate for the Palácio do Planalto).
Temer’s popularity would be a challenge, as the former president’s term ended at the end of 2018 with the government considered bad or terrible by 62% of those interviewed, fair by 29% and good or excellent by just 7%, according to a Datafolha survey.
Temer’s allies use an old marriage metaphor to describe the party’s relationship with the former president.
Members of the party’s leadership recall his history with the MDB, for which he was once a federal deputy, president of the party, of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Republic.
On another front, they also say that Temer is valued in the MDB and that he never showed any interest in taking on the role of president, which he held from 2016 to 2018, after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff (PT).
Another argument cited by emedebistas is the fact that the PSDB is today a much smaller party than the MDB. In the Chamber, there are 14 toucans — this Saturday (25th), the 15th, Luciano Vieira (Republicanos-RJ), joined. There are 42 emedebists.
In practice, launching your own candidate for President would mean spending a large portion of the electoral fund to finance a campaign.
Today, the priority of parties, especially those that have shrunk in size like the PSDB, is to form a bench in the Chamber to receive party funds and continue to have representation in Parliament. Perillo’s expectation is to double the number of deputies in 2026, reaching 30.
In 2022, the PSDB managed to reach the barrier clause and receive resources from the party fund for having entered into a federation with Cidadania. This year, the alliance was dissolved.
MDB has the seventh largest share of the fund (it receives around R$7 million monthly).
Temer was targeted by Bolsonarists this year when he led an effort to unite right-wing and center-right governors around a single presidential candidacy in 2026. He said, at the time, that the movement did not exclude the former president ().
He said at the time that Bolsonaro “has electoral prestige” and that any presidential candidate from that camp who opposes the former president would have difficulties.
“See the case of Tarcísio [de Freitas, governador de São Paulo]. He has been very wise. He is a Bolsonaro supporter, he is not disloyal to Bolsonaro, but he has established his own identity, without opposing Bolsonaro. Having Bolsonaro’s opposition isn’t enough,” he said.
Afterwards, the former president returned to the news when a meeting took place at his home with the rapporteur of the amnesty bill for those convicted in the January 8th coup attacks, Paulinho da Força (Solidariedade-SP), in which a change in direction in the proposal to deal with the reduction of sentences was defined.
Representative Aécio Neves also participated, who suggested the new strategy to the rapporteur, and, remotely, the president of the Chamber, (-PB). STF ministers were also consulted and provided support.
