At the end of the government, Temer is struggling to use the BRICs to improve the image

At a meeting, members of his delegation commented that, for the Brazilian president, to be sensitive to the honors of Mandela (Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leader of the resistance against the l. apartheid) would be positive in his image, which suffers from historical disapproval hints.

With an approval of 4%, according to Ibope, Temer is the most misjudged president since the beginning of the investigation in 1986.

Opportunity lost

The BRICS – a group emerging countries formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – meet every year since 2009.

This is Temer's third participation, and offered more more possibilities than posing for photos: at a time when Donald Trump's American government protectionism was provoking trade wars, the summit was a space for other countries to take the lead in defending multilateralism.

"There were a lot of people who thought the blockage would be temporary, but he already managed to show that he came to stay," says Oliver Stuenkel, coordinator of the MBA International Relations at FGV-SP.

In the last ten years, consolidate the acronym with the defense of common interests, the institutionalization of a Business Council and the creation of a bank of its own development.

According to badysts heard by BBC News Brazil, however, Temer's difficulty is not the political strength to take advantage of this opportunity.

"This is a very good time for the less important countries to take the lead," says researcher Sergio Veloso, of the BRICS Policy Center.

"Fear, however, is unable to ride this wave.At today, the only thing the government can do is to seek survival and try to keep something of itself in the next government "says the researcher.

According to Stuenkel, Itamaraty made a considerable effort to maintain Brazilian participation in the bloc.

"Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes has traveled extensively in Africa, supported the BRIC concept, which he initially viewed with skepticism, and he did what he did. could, as much as possible, "says the expert. "The problem is that the Temer government is very fragile, and this has a direct impact on foreign policy."

"We can say that we are in a moment of depreciation, of extreme weakness, with no capacity to build a narrative of public investment or projection of Brazil," explains Veloso.

The Minister also said that Brazil had not requested an official meeting with Putin and that the talks on the meat embargo "are ongoing, and this is not when from a meeting like this (a bilateral meeting at the BRIC summit) this sort of thing is resolved "- although this kind of topic was discussed with the Chinese president at the meeting with Temer on Thursday.

The great victory of Brazil at the summit was the agreement for the creation of a branch of the development bank in the country and a partnership for cooperation in the field of aviation.

But several other partnerships that the government hoped to conclude, including one for cooperation on satellite imagery and one for the establishment of a vaccination center in Africa.

According to Aloysio, work on vaccines is progressing and "the agreements that Brazil hoped to conclude, it closed".

Consolation Award

"To badume leadership in the BRICs, Brazil will have to articulate a new narrative, a plan, starting in January, and everything will depend on who will be elected (in the October elections). ) according to Stuenkel

If the government finds it difficult to be relevant at the summit, at least the photo with one of Mandela's granddaughters, Ndileka Mandela, Temer succeeded.

Visit to the Foundation Mandela, however, almost caused embarrbadment between the president and his ministers.

Temer asked the aides to leave the meeting of the official calendar so as not to cause political trouble. The fear was that, n & # 39, being not invited to attend the meeting, six ministers who also attended the summit would feel "deprived of something special" in the words of a member of the entourage.

The presidency has considered inviting all ministers to participate, but that would create a logistical problem, since the office where the meeting took place is small.

As the photo would be published and the ministers would be aware of the meeting anyway, the solution was to set a time when they had other commitments. Only the Minister of the Civil House, Eliseu Padilha, accompanied the president, according to one of the ministers, who was not invited to the meeting.