Impeachment trial looms for Brazil’s beleaguered Rousseff
Brazil’s Senate
voted early Wednesday to hold an impeachment trial for the nation’s suspended
president Dilma Rousseff, a process that could see her permanently removed from
office. The vote in favor of trying Rousseff, who was suspended from the
presidency in May, was 59 in favor, 21 against.
The Senate
suspended Rousseff, the South American nation’s first female president, on May
12 over accusations of illegal accounting practices and fiddling the budget to
mask a slumping economy.
Rousseff, 68,
has likened the impeachment drive to a putsch by her political enemies.
The impeachment
trial is set to open around August 25 — four days after the Olympics closing
ceremony — and is expected to last five days, concluding with a judgment vote. The
timing of the nation’s ongoing political crisis could hardly be more awkward
for Brazil, which was meant to be showcasing its burgeoning economic clout and
political stability with South America’s first Olympics.
At the start of
the marathon Senate session, which got under way on Tuesday, Supreme Court
President Ricardo Lewandowski reminded senators that they were about to
“exercise one of the most serious tasks under the constitution.”
Rousseff’s
opponents had no trouble attaining a simple majority of the 81 Senate votes to
begin steps to end her scandal-plagued presidency.
“What we are
talking about today is defending the constitution and democracy itself. Those
who commit crimes must be held responsible for them,” said Senator Aecio Neves,
one of Rousseff’s most fervent opponents rivals. “The conditions are firmly in
place for removing Dilma Rousseff,” he said.
About 250 of
Rousseff’s supporters demonstrated in central Sao Paulo, while in the Senate
chamber in Brasilia her allies defended her. “Today is not a good day for our
democracy,” said one, Senator Paulo Rocha. Against her, he said, “there is a
political alliance that smells of a coup.”
Impeachment
would not only seal Rousseff’s political fate, but would bring an end to 13
years of leftist rule in Brazil: Her political mentor, president Luiz Inacio
Lula da Silva preceded her in office. But in recent months, Lula, as he is
called, has encountered political problems of his own.
Officials
recently announced that the 70-year old leftist leader will be put on trial for
allegedly trying to obstruct a corruption probe at Petrobras, the national oil
concern.
Since Rousseff’s
suspension, her deeply unpopular vice president Michel Temer has served as
Brazil’s interim leader, as the nation struggles to emerge from its worst
recession in decades. Rousseff’s allies in the Workers’ Party point out that
many of the lawmakers accusing her are implicated in corruption cases arguably
far more serious than accounting tricks. But Rousseff’s enemies say the die is
already cast, and predict her removal once and for all at the impeachment trial
that gets under way later this month.
“The president
is ever more isolated, a very pronounced isolation that has only gotten worse
in recent weeks and now even includes her own party,” said Senator Aloysio
Nunes of the opposition party PSDB. “I have no doubt that the vote will be in
favor of impeachment, as it will be at the final trial,” he told AFP ahead of
the Senate session.
Rousseff, 68,
was jailed and tortured by the country’s military regime in the 1970s when she
belonged to an urban guerrilla group. Rousseff rode Lula’s coattails to power
when term limits forced him to step down in 2011.
Brazil’s booming
economy later sank into its worst recession in 80 years and a huge corruption
scandal erupted at state oil giant Petrobras.
Rousseff is not
facing corruption charges in the wide-ranging scandal. But she has been tainted
by its stain on the Workers’ Party, which is accused of lining its coffers with
some of the missing billions. If she is
removed from office, Temer, her center-right running mate-turned-opponent, will
become the full-fledged president until the next elections in 2018. He has
urged the Senate to move quickly, saying “people need to know who the president
is.”
Temer, 75,
presided over the Olympics opening ceremony Friday, drawing boos from the crowd
— just as Rousseff did at the opener of the 2014 World Cup — reflecting
widening public disgust with Brazil’s entire political class.
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