Impeachment proceedings against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff yesterday faced their first major hurdle when a special committee was to be formed to decide whether to send the case to the full lower house.
Once established, the 65-member committee representing all parties are to hear Rousseff’s defense, then rule on whether to allow the matter to go further.
The action in Brazilian Congress is the start of what could be a months-long battle over the leftist president’s fate just as the world’s seventh-largest economy finds itself bogged down in recession and fallout from a corruption scandal centered on the state oil company Petrobras.
Rousseff is accused of illegal accounting maneuvers in the government’s handling of the federal budget. She has repeatedly said she is not guilty and that the accounting methods were a long-accepted practice in previous governments.
For now, the presidency believes it has enough support to ride out a vote in Congress. The lower house would have to vote by more than two thirds for the case to be sent for a formal trial in the Senate, where again a two-thirds majority would be needed to remove Rousseff from office.
However, Rousseff allies want impeachment proceedings to move rapidly, while the opposition is expected to try to stall in order to benefit from popular discontent with Rousseff.
In the meantime, Brazil’s economic woes and political gridlock are expected to deepen.
“This whole process will put pressure on the economy and worsen it,” University of Sao Paulo political scientist Rubens Figueredo said.
Brazil, host of the next year’s Rio Olympics, is in a deep gloom, with GDP down 4.5 percent in the third quarter year-on-year, and the national currency down one third against the US dollar this year.
Rousseff is also tainted by the Petrobras scandal, which has embroiled leading politicians and business figures, exposing the depth of corruption at the highest levels in Brazil.
Even if Rousseff herself has not been linked to any Petrobras-related crimes, the saga is adding to the sense of crisis that has plagued her second term.
Analysts said that Rousseff’s seemingly safe congressional majority risks evaporating.
With only 10 percent voter approval ratings she has little authority and supposed allies might want to jump ship.
The key would be whether her Workers’ Party coalition partner the PMDB stays loyal, with speculation that cracks are widening.
However, the lawyer who initiated Brazil’s last successful impeachment of a president, in 1992, attacked what he said was a politicized and unfair campaign against Rousseff.
Marcello Lavenere, now 77, was an attorney and president of the Brazilian Bar Association when he coauthored a petition for impeachment of then-Brazilian president Fernando Collor de Mello on grounds that Collor benefited from an influence peddling scheme.
The corruption charges were serious enough for Congress’s lower house and Senate to vote overwhelmingly for Collor’s ouster, even if he tried to end the impeachment trial by resigning.
Lavenere told Folha newspaper that the charges against Rousseff are lightweight in comparison.
“Impeachment is not for political fights,” he said.
“What did she do? Did she rob? Did she take a bribe? Did she receive illicit gains? Did she violate the decorum of her post? Did she commit any of the illicit acts contained in the constitution and the law of impeachment? No,” he said.
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