Brazil’s top electoral court dismissed a case on Friday that threatened to unseat President Michel Temer for alleged illegal campaign funding in the 2014 election, when he was the running mate of impeached President Dilma Rousseff.

After four days of deliberations, judges voted four to three in a case that many viewed as a measure of whether Temer could remain in office amid a growing corruption scandal and single-digit popularity.



“We cannot be changing the president of the Republic all the time, even if the people want to,” said the court’s chief judge, Gilmar Mendes.

Mendes, who backed the impeachment of Rousseff, said the country should not expect the court to solve the current political crisis.

The acquittal will help Temer retain key coalition allies who will support his fiscal reform agenda approval in Congress. The austerity measures aim to bring a gaping budget deficit under control and restore investor confidence.

Temer has denied wrongdoing and vowed to stay in office.

Last month, a recording emerged that apparently captured Temer endorsing hush money to ex-house speaker Eduardo Cunha, a former Temer ally serving 15 years in prison for corruption and money laundering. Soon after that, another bombshell came out: that Temer was being investigated for allegedly receiving bribes.

“The facts are very serious, unbearable,” said Judge Luiz Fux, who voted to remove Temer, adding the campaign finance case was about “very serious crimes.”

The campaign finance case was filed shortly after the 2014 presidential election by one of the losing parties. It alleged that the ticket of President Dilma Rousseff and running mate Temer, then the vice presidential candidate, gained an unfair advantage through illegal campaign contributions.

Temer took over the presidency last year after Rousseff was impeached and removed for illegally managing the federal budget.

The campaign finance allegations were bolstered in recent months by stunning testimony from plea bargains signed by current and former executives at the construction giant Odebrecht, a company at the center of a colossal investigation into billions of dollars in inflated contracts and kickbacks to politicians.

The executives provided shocking details of tens of millions of dollars in bribes and illegal campaign contributions, including to the Rousseff-Temer ticket.

Over four days of deliberations, the judges argued about whether those plea bargains should be considered in their decision. They also clashed over the strength of the original evidence and whether punishments should be doled out when illegal campaign finance was widespread.

A guilty verdict would have annulled the 2014 victory, thus stripping Temer of the rest of his mandate. It could also have stripped both Rousseff and Temer of political rights for eight years.

While Temer had vowed to appeal a conviction, it would have weakened his hand in a climate of several corruption scandals and a public furious about it.

“Temer will stay in office and probably face many demonstrations in the streets,” said Alexandre Barros, a political risk consultant with the Brasilia-based firm Early Warning. “I don’t think anybody is in the mood to decide something unexpected at this point.”

The political turmoil in Brazil that began with the push last year to remove Rousseff from power for violating budget laws has reached a fever pitch. There are near weekly protests calling for Temer’s ousting, frequent shouting matches in Congress, and a simmering debate in the media over whether Temer will manage to finish out his term.

That atmosphere was reflected in the courtroom, where there were several tense moments. Among the most dramatic came during the opening of the afternoon session Friday, when a prosecutor requested the disqualification of one of the judges who had once been a lawyer for Rousseff and one justice decried articles in the press that linked him to a corruption investigation. As the tension in the chamber rose, the court’s president called a brief break.



