Who was Tancredo Neves?

A lawyer from an old mining town

Tancredo de Almeida Neves was born on March 4, 1910, in São João del-Rei, a colonial town in Minas Gerais, the inland state whose 18th-century gold rush filled its towns with baroque churches. He trained as a lawyer and worked as a prosecutor there. Getúlio Vargas’s Estado Novo dictatorship cut his political career short in 1937; he came back in 1945, when elections returned.

He reached the federal government under Getúlio Vargas. In 1954 he was Getúlio’s minister of justice, in the last months of that government. Seven years later he found himself at the center of another crisis. When President Jânio Quadros resigned in August 1961, the military ministers tried to block the vice-president, João Goulart, known as Jango. Congress hurried through a parliamentary system so that Jango could take office with reduced powers, and the man chosen as prime minister was Tancredo.

Under the military regime that took power in 1964 he stayed in the legal opposition. In 1982, when Brazilians elected state governors by direct vote again, the opposition won in Minas, and in 1983 Tancredo became governor.

On the stage, with a back door open

In 1984 millions of Brazilians rallied for Diretas Já, “direct elections now”, the campaign to let the people choose the president. Tancredo, 74, climbed onto those stages, quietly. He never closed the other road, though: the Electoral College, the body of members of Congress and delegates from the state assemblies that held the indirect vote for president. When the amendment for direct elections fell 22 votes short on April 25, 1984, that road was him.

How the votes added up

To win in the College he needed votes from the government’s own party, the PDS. The PDS split over its candidate, who ended up being Paulo Maluf. The dissidents formed the Liberal Front and allied with Tancredo’s party, the PMDB. His running mate came from that group: José Sarney, a former president of the PDS. The Workers’ Party, the PT, refused to take part.

On January 15, 1985, the 686 members of the College voted one by one, out loud, in the chamber of the National Congress in Brasília, while a crowd waited outside. Tancredo got 480 votes, Maluf 180, with 17 abstentions and 9 absences. After five generals, a civilian had been chosen.

Elected and not sworn in

He never governed. Taken to hospital twelve hours before the inauguration, he was operated on seven times and died on April 21, 1985, aged 75; the illness is told in How did Tancredo Neves die?. A year later, Congress settled where his name belonged.

The citizen Tancredo de Almeida Neves, elected and not sworn in by reason of his death, shall appear in the gallery of those anointed by the Brazilian nation to the Supreme Magistracy, for all legal purposes.

The law was signed on the first anniversary of his death. That is why he figures in the gallery of Brazil’s presidents without having governed for a single day. How the regime itself bowed out that March is in How did Brazil’s military dictatorship end?.