FOLHA DE SAO PAULO (Brazil)
BRASILIA – Francisco Everardo Oliviera Silva – better known as Tiririca (Grumpy) – was elected to the Brazilian Parliament in 2010 with the highest number of votes. He had campaigned on the slogan “Vote Tiririca, it can’t get any worse.”
Now he says he has lost hope for politics and will not run in the next election, reports Folha de Sao Paulo.
During his campaign, he had famously said “Do you know what a member of parliament does? I don’t, but I’ll find out and let you know!”
Now his answer is: “there is not much that can be done.”
Before trying his luck at politics, Tiririca was a successful clown, dropping out of school when he was eight-years-old to become a circus comedian. During the election, other candidates questioned his literacy skills, and in fact, he barely passed the reading test required to take office.
But after all that, Tiririca now plans to leave politics and resume his career as a comedian.
He told Folha that his political career does not give him enough time to be an artist, which provides him more money than what he currently gets – a 26,700 reais ($ 13,350) monthly wage.
“I am a popular artist. People ask me to put on a show and I can’t do it,” he says. Tiririca also wants to spend more time with his three-year-old daughter. He has seven children all together.
He promises that when he returns to the stage, he will not make fun of politicians anymore. “We think they don’t do anything, but this is not true – they work a lot.” In the last two years, he says he learnt a lot. “This is like a school. You learn how to follow the good path and about the ‘other path’ referring to corruption.”
