PRESIDENT Michel Temer put the armed forces in charge of policing in Rio de Janeiro today following an increase in violence.

It is the first time the military has been put in control of security since the fall of the country’s US-backed dictatorship 30 years ago.

However, it appeared to be an effort by the notoriously corrupt Mr Temer to boost himself in the polls so that he has a chance of being re-elected.

After signing the order, Mr Temer gave a hard-line speech claiming that the “extreme measure” was necessary so that criminals don’t “kill the present” and “murder the future.”

It is questionable as to how much of a difference it will make, given that units of the Brazilian armed forces are regularly deployed alongside the police in anti-gang operations.

And the country’s police themselves are highly militarised, with regular uniformed officers belonging to state military police units — distinct from provosts who police the military — and considered reserve troops.

Rio’s own BOPE unit sports a patch showing a skull with a dagger through it, and Amnesty International reported 811 killings by police in Rio state between January and November 2016, most of them in poor slums.

The military deployment also serves to distract from Mr Temer’s attempts to push through catastrophic pension cuts, with it causing the vote to be postponed. Commentators had doubted that Mr Temer would get the two-thirds support needed.

The plan would increase the retirement age by a decade and require people to pay in contributions for 40 years to receive a full pension. An earlier draft would have stripped disabled and elderly people of payments needed to meet their extra living expenses.

The pensions cuts are just the latest in Mr Temer’s neoliberal reforms. They have been deeply unpopular, with his approval rating in the single digits.

To boost his chances of re-election he and his supporters appear to have designed a court ban on popular Workers Party ex-president Lula da Silva from standing.

Forensic experts said yesterday that documents used to uphold the ban — for fraud — had clearly been altered and manipulated.

Mr Temer’s corruption, and involvement in the “Car Wash” bribery scandal, for which Lula is being framed, is however beyond doubt — only his supporters in parliament spared him from prosecution by the Supreme Court for taking bribes.