Tancredo Neves - Presidential Elections and Death

Presidential Elections and Death

In 1984, he was one of the leaders of the Diretas Já movement that demanded direct elections for President of Brazil. Neves was the opposition candidate to succeed President João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo.

The campaign for direct elections failed. There was no popular public vote. Neves was elected President by a majority of the Electoral College on January 15, 1985, where he received 480 votes.

However, on 14 March, on the last day of his predecessor's term and on the eve of his own inauguration, Neves became severely ill, requiring immediate surgery. He thus was not able to attend his own inauguration on 15 March. As the Constitution requires the President-elect and Vice-President-elect to take their oaths of office before the assembled National Congress, the inauguration was accordingly held only for Vice-President-elect José Sarney, who immediately became Acting President. At that time, there was still hope that Neves would recover and appear before the Congress to take the oath of office.

Neves suffered from abdominal complications and developed generalised infections, and after seven operations, he died on 21 April—more than a month after his term of office began, without ever having taken the oath of office. He was accordingly succeeded as President by Sarney.

Neves's death caused an outpouring of national grief and his ordeal was intensively covered by the Brazilian media and followed with anxiety by the whole nation, who had seen in him the way out of the authoritarian regime into what he had called a "New Republic" (Nova República). Tancredo Neves is still counted among the official list of presidents of Brazil as a matter of homage and honour, since despite not having taken the oath of office, he technically never became President. An Act of Congress was thus necessary to make this homage official. Accordingly on the first anniversary of his death, a statute was signed into law declaring that he should be counted among the Presidents of Brazil.

The Tancredo Neves International Airport in Belo Horizonte is named after him.