The Brazilian Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Brazilian Chamber of Deputies President Eduardo Cunha, who orchestrated the effort to impeach Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, must step down because he is facing a corruption trial.
The decision added to the political turmoil in Brazil, a country deeply divided over its scandal-plagued leaders. Just this week, Brazilian Vice President Michel Temer, the man preparing to take over the president’s office from Rousseff, was ordered to pay a fine for violating campaign financing limits.
The twin decisions are not expected to save Rousseff’s presidency. Support for her ouster remains strong in the Brazilian Senate, which is preparing to vote next week on whether to remove her from office and put her on trial over claims of budgetary manipulation.
Photo: Reuters
Still, the decisions tarnish the men in line to take over from her. Despite his conviction, Temer is still expected to become president if Rousseff is removed by the Senate. Yet the ruling could make him ineligible to run for elected office for eight years, creating an unusual situation in which a politician who might be barred from campaigning ends up running the country.
On Thursday, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Teori Zavascki ruled against Temer’s powerful ally, Cunha. As the speaker of the lower house of congress who oversaw the vote in April to impeach Rousseff in the Chamber of Deputies, Cunha had adroitly fended off charges of taking as much as US$40 million in bribes.
Academics and political analysts described the initial ruling by Zavascki, which the 11-member court later endorsed, as reflecting the capacity for Brazil’s legal system to curb abuses of power. Former Brazilian Supreme Court chief justice Joaquim Barbosa called the move “extraordinary and courageous.”
The ruling to remove Cunha, an evangelical Christian radio commentator, sidelines a top political opponent of Rousseff after much of his role in the impeachment process had been completed. The impeachment decision is now in the hands of the Senate, which is expected to vote against the president on Wednesday next week.
Cunha can appeal the ruling against him, and he is expected to do so.
A spokesman for Temer said he would not appeal his conviction and would pay a fine of about US$23,000. (Temer, 75, has already signaled that if he were to become president, he would not run for re-election.)
In a statement, Temer’s office said that he had exceeded the limit for campaign donations because of a “calculation error.”
Temer’s office also said that he would become ineligible to run for office only if another court chose to act on the electoral court’s ruling.
In the lower house, attention now shifts to Waldir Maranhao, an obscure ally of Cunha poised to take over as speaker. Like Cunha, Maranhao is under investigation on graft charges, raising the possibility that the Supreme Court could also order him to step down.
The legal clouds around Cunha and Temer raise concerns over the legitimacy of a possible government led by their centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, which recently broke an alliance with Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party to seek her impeachment.
The ruling involving Temer was issued on Tuesday in a case before an electoral court in Sao Paulo. In that case, prosecutors were trying to increase the fine against him over campaign donations he made in 2014. The court decided against increasing the fine, but it upheld the ruling that Temer had violated campaign finance laws.
While prosecutors have determined that Temer will not face an investigation over testimony implicating him in the colossal graft scandal engulfing Petrobras, the national oil company, various politicians identified as potential ministers in Temer’s Cabinet are battling their own corruption cases.
The figures under investigation include top allies of Temer, such as Geddel Vieira Lima, a former executive at one of Brazil’s largest government-controlled banks; Romero Juca, a senator from Roraima state in the Amazon; and former Brazilian minister of tourism Henrique Alves.
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