“If impeachment is the way to get it then it’ll be welcomed by the market, but there are so many twists and things that can happen between now and then”.
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Brazil’s real rose after Lower house head Eduardo Cunha accepted a request to impeach the president and as Congress approved a budget measure that will avoid a government shutdown.
A final (and remotely) if Rousseff has to step down, she would be replaced by Vice president Michel Temer from the PMDB party, senior ally in the ruling coalition.
Constitutional expert Ives Gandra Martins, who wrote in a legal opinion this year that there was a juridical basis for impeachment, said the process would ultimately be decided politically.
Some investors took Cunha’s decision as a positive, betting it could lead to a resolution of the political stalemate.
This found expression Tuesday in violent attacks by military police on high school students protesting against the plans by the state of Sao Paulo’s right-wing Governor Geraldo Alckmin to carry out a massive education restructuring program that would close 94 schools and affect some 310,000 students and 74,000 teachers. Rousseff sharply disputes the accusations.
The lower house ethics committee is expected to open an investigation into Cunha next week with the backing of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party.
The president was defiant Wednesday night.
Rousseff said Wednesday she is confident she will survive the assault and her allies told O Globo newspaper that they have enough votes to block an impeachment vote. “This request is unjustified”, she said.
In Rio de Janeiro’s upmarket neighbourhood of Copacabana, residents reacted with disdain to Rousseff’s feedback, banging pots and pans in an effort to drown out her televised tackle.
When news came early on Wednesday that the committee members from the PT, Rousseff’s party, would be voting to recommend Cunha’s removal from the speakership, the stalemate broke down. She denied responsibility for any “illicit acts” and claimed not to have supported the attempt to reach a deal with Cunha based on killing the ethics charges against him.
Under Brazil’s impeachment procedures, a committee is formed to consider the allegations, which are then voted on by the Chamber of Deputies. “The government may have problems, but you don’t correct the path by bringing down the president”, he said.
Members of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party say the proceedings are retribution by Cunha. Sen. That sweeping investigations has implicated dozens of lawmakers in the governing coalition, including Cunha, and some of its biggest corporate kingpins. “There needs to be more than two-thirds of more than 500 deputies voting against her, and that number is very hard to reach”.
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If the proposal is cleared, Rousseff will have to temporarily hand over power to Vice President Michel Temer until an inquiry is conducted by the Senate, which could last for several months.
