Brazilian President Impeached
September 2, 2016 in Brazil
Brazil’s Senate voted on 31 August to remove President Dilma Rousseff from office for manipulating the budget, effectively putting an end to the thirteen years in power of her left-wing Worker’s Party. Ms Rousseff has denied the charges. Michel Temer has been sworn in as president and will serve the remainder of Ms Rousseff’s term until 1 January 2019. He has promised to boost Brazil’s economy, which is going through its longest and deepest recession in the past quarter of a century. His critics have already warned that he plans to cut many of the popular social programmes that had been introduced by the Workers’ Party.
Sixty-one senators voted in favour of her dismissal and twenty against, effectively meeting the two-thirds majority needed to remove her from the presidency.
During his first cabinet meeting since the vote, Mr Temer disclosed that his inauguration marked a “new era.” The centre-right PMDB party politician had been serving as acting president during the impeachment proceedings. During the meeting, which was broadcast live on television, he asked his ministers to “vigorously defend” the government from accusations that Ms Rousseff’s dismissal amounted to a coup d’état, adding, “we can’t leave one accusation unanswered.” He also told ministers to work closely with the Congress in order to rive the Brazilian economy.
The dismissal of Ms Rousseff has caused a rift between Brazil and three left-wing South American governments, who shortly after the vote was announced criticized the move. Brazil and Venezuela recalled each other’s ambassadors, while Brazilian envoys to Bolivia and Ecuador have also ben ordered home. In the wake of the vote, anti-Temer demonstrations were held in a number of cities, including Brasilia.
While Ms Rousseff lost the impeachment battle, she did win a separate Senate vote that had sought to ban her from public office for eight years. Pledging to appeal against her dismissal, she told her supporters, “I will not say goodbye to you. I am certain I can say: ‘See you soon,’” adding, “they have convicted an innocent person and carried out a parliamentary coup.” In May, Ms Rousseff was suspended after the Senate voted to go ahead with the impeachment process. She was accused of moving funds between government budgets, which under Brazilian law is illegal. Her critics stated that she was trying to plug deficit holes in popular social programmes in a bid to boost her chances of being re-elected in 2014. Ms Rousseff fought the allegations, arguing that her right-wing rivals had been trying to remove her from office ever since her re-election, adding that she was being ousted because she had allowed a wide-ranging corruption investigation to go ahead, which resulted in many high-profile politicians being charged. Senators who voted on Wednesday in favour to remove her from office have disclosed that Ms Rousseff and the Workers’ Party are the ones who were corrupt, adding that they needed to go.
Opposition Lawyers File New Petition to Impeach Brazilian President
October 22, 2015 in BrazilOn Wednesday, opposition lawyers filed a new petition to Congress for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
The authors of the filing are prominent lawyers Helio Bicudo, a founding member of the president’s ruling Worker’s Party, and Miguel Feale, a former justice minister, who are backed by the country’s main opposition party, the PSDB. The new petition reinforces an earlier one by the lawyers to include accusations that the doctoring of government accounts continued into Rousseff’s current team. It also accused the president of signing spending decrees of 820 million reais (US $210 million) with approval from Congress, which is an impeachable violation of the country’s budget laws.
If the request is taken up by the speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, who himself is under growing pressure to resign due to corruption allegations, months-long impeachment proceedings would begin, which will effectively prolong a political crisis that has deepened the country’s economic slump.
The request is considered to be the most serious attempt so far to impeach the Brazilian president as it is based on a federal audit court ruling that her government manipulated its accounts in a bid to disguise the size of the deficit and to allow for more spending in the run-up to her narrow re-election last year.
The president’s government is scrambling to block impeachment proceedings in the lower house, where the president’s opponents would require two-thirds of the votes in order to approve an impeachment trial that would be held in the Senate. Furthermore, polls have shown that two in every three Brazilians want to see the president impeached. Her approval rate has fallen to single digits in recent polls, with many blaming her for not stopping a corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras and for mismanaging the country’s once-booming economy.
If Congress does impeach the president, then Vice President Michel Temer, who is the leader of the country’s largest party, the PMDB, would serve as president of the remainder of the term. However it currently remains unclear when, or even wether, the speaker will decide to take up the impeachment request, as Cunha is battling to remain in office following revelations of secret Swiss bank accounts in his name that link him to the massive bribery and political kickback scandal at Petrobras.
