Franco, Itamar Augusto

Franco, Itamar Augusto (b. 28 June 1931). President of Brazil 1992–4 An engineer from Bahia, he became mayor of his home town Juiz da Fora in 1967. In 1974, he was elected into the State Senate of Minas Gerais against the opposition of the military, but in 1986 failed in his bid to become governor of the state. In 1988 he presided over the committee investigating the corruption charges against Sarney, and in 1989 made a crucial contribution to Fernando Collor de Mello's successful presidental campaign. In return, he became Vice-President, but he soon broke with Collor and left his party. He took charge of the affairs of state following Collor's suspension on suspicion of corruption in October 1992, and became President upon his resignation on 29 December 1992. To reduce the country's endemic hyperinflation (2,567 per cent in 1993), he carried out a currency reform and introduced the real, whose value was pegged to the US dollar. He sought to strengthen the country's democratic and liberal base through constitutional reform (24 May 1994), which limited the President's term of office to four years and for the first time granted native Indians a degree of self-government.