A series of political crises including a Value-Added Tax corruption scandal at oil giant Petrobras and the ongoing threat of impeachment against President Dilma Rousseff has meant the government has so far failed to get the fiscal adjustments through Congress that it believes will improve the economy and return investor confidence.
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The PMDB is an ally of Rousseff’s center-left Workers Party, or PT, but Cunha broke with the ruling coalition in September.
Now that that’s happened, the lower house of Congress will form a commission which votes within 15 days on whether to continue the impeachment proceedings. “I have received with indignation the decision by the head of the lower chamber to [launch] the impeachment process”, she said.
“I’ve committed no illicit act, there is no suspicion hanging over me of any misuse of public money”, the president said.
The speaker is now facing accusations that he hid money in Swiss accounts and received bribes as part of the kickback scandal at state-controlled oil company Petrobras.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff arrives at a press conference…
The figures were substantially worse than expected and led analysts to predict that the downturn would continue to deepen next year. The celebrations provided a brief flashback to 1992 when mass protests preceded the impeachment of then-President Fernando Collor De Mello. After receiving Rousseff’s defense they will then have five sessions to make a decision to accept or reject the accusations. The speaker denies wrongdoing. Humberto Costa, the party’s leader in the Senate, said “Cunha has created the lowest-level of blackmail a nation can see”.
The government is likely to legally challenge the impeachment, said Sylvio Costa, founder of the political news site Congress In Focus.
The country’s biggest corruption investigation ever is still rattling the heights of Brazilian politics and business, slowing public works by companies under investigation and paralyzing budget negotiations in the capital Brasilia.
While the Brazilian right had previously organized mass demonstrations calling for impeachment-and in many cases for a military coup-it is by no means clear that Cunha can muster the two-thirds vote needed to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, whose leader has publicly opposed the move.
Cunha was expected later Thursday to order the first step in the long impeachment procedure – the creation of a special committee featuring representatives of all the parties in the lower house.
-Permanent removal would require the support of two-thirds of senators.
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Shortly after the announcement, Ms Rousseff made a short, televised statement to insist on her innocence.
