Clown in Congress: Brazil’s Tiririca says he won’t run again
RIO DE JANEIRO — A clown elected twice to Brazil’s Congress under the slogan “It can’t get any worse” apparently feels that it did. He says he is too embarrassed by his fellow lawmakers to run again.
Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, universally known as Tiririca, said Wednesday that he is ashamed of his colleagues — more than half of whom are reportedly under investigation for corruption — and won’t run again in 2018. As a member of the Chamber of Deputies, Tiririca had continued working in a circus on weekends and he said he was returning to clowning full-time.
“I am embarrassed,” the clown, whose name means Grumpy, said in an eight-minute rant to a nearly empty session — his first address to Brazil’s lower house in his seven years in office. “I walk with my head up high because I did nothing wrong, but many of you do not have the guts to do that. You even put disguises to go out. Being a congressman is a shame.”
While Tiririca’s campaign may have gotten laughs, it was far from a joke. He won office in 2010 with more than 1.3 million votes, outpolling every other candidate in Brazil’s largest state, Sao Paulo, in an election stunner that garnered world attention. He won re-election by a landslide in 2014.