Tragically, the New Republic was orphaned at birth. The night before his inauguration, Tancredo was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation on a bleeding stomach tumour: it proved benign, but in hospital he picked up an infection and six weeks later died of septicaemia. His funeral was the largest mass event in Brazilian history; a crowd of two million followed his coffin from the hospital where he had died in São Paulo to Guarulhos airport. The vice-president, José Sarney , a second-league politician from Maranhão, who had been fobbed off with a ceremonial post, suddenly found himself serving a full presidential term. His administration was disastrous, though not all of it was his own fault: he was saddled with a ministerial team he had not chosen, and a newly powerful Congress which would have given any president a rough ride. But Sarney made matters worse by a lack of decisiveness, and wasn't helped by the sleaze that hung like a fog around his government, with corruption institutionalized on a massive scale. No progress was made on the economic front either. By 1990 inflation accelerated into hyperinflation proper, and, despite spending almost $40 billion repaying interest on the foreign debt, the principal had swollen to $120 billion. Popular disgust was so great that on every occasion Sarney found himself near a crowd of real people, he was greeted with a shower of bricks and curses. The high hopes of 1985 had evaporated: Sarney had brought the whole notion of civilian politics into disrepute, and achieved the near-impossible of making the military look good.