The Brazilian Senate early yesterday voted to indict suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on charges of breaking budget laws and put her on trial in an impeachment process that has stalled national politics since January.
With the eyes of the world on the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, senators in the capital, Brasilia, voted 59 to 21 against Rousseff in a raucous, 20-hour session presided over by Brazilian Supreme Court President Ricardo Lewandowski.
A conviction would definitively remove her from office, ending 13 years of rule by her Workers’ Party, and confirm that Brazilian interim president Michel Temer will serve out the rest of Rousseff’s term through 2018.
Photo: AFP
Rousseff’s opponents needed only a simple majority in the 81-seat Senate to put her on trial for manipulating government accounts and spending without congressional approval, which they say helped her win re-election in 2014.
The impeachment trial is set to open around Aug. 25 — four days after the Olympics closing ceremony — and is expected to last five days, concluding with a judgement vote.
A verdict would need the votes of two-thirds of the Senate to convict Rousseff, five votes less than her opponents mustered yesterday.
The vote showed the movement to oust Rousseff has gained strength in the Senate, which had voted 55 to 22 in May to take up the impeachment proceedings initiated in the lower house in December last year. It also looked like game over for Rousseff, who lost crucial ground instead of winning over more senators.
The Senate move is likely to strengthen Temer’s hand as he strives to establish his legitimacy and stabilize Brazil politically.
The uncertainty has hampered his efforts to plug a fiscal crisis inherited from Rousseff, who is blamed for driving the economy into what could be its worst recession since the 1930s.
Temer has urged senators to wrap up the trial quickly so he can move ahead with a plan to cap public spending, reform an overly generous pension system and restore confidence in government finances.
Investors’ expectations that Rousseff would be replaced by the more business-friendly Temer have strengthened Brazil’s currency and driven up shares on the Sao Paulo stock market by more than 30 percent since January, placing them among the world’s best-performing assets.
Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing and denounced her impeachment as a right-wing conspiracy that has used an accounting technicality as a pretext to illegally remove a government that improved the lot of Brazil’s poorer classes.
“The cards are marked in this game. There is no trial, just a sentence that has already been written,” Workers’ Party Senator Jorge Viana said in a speech to the chamber, adding that the impeachment was driven by the elite which oppose social welfare gains.
Rousseff’s critics say her interventionist economic policies and inability to govern led to the debacle in Latin America’s largest country.
Some say that whatever the legal reasons for impeaching her, she should not be allowed to return to office for the good of the nation.
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