Brazil’s Congress moved closer to impeaching President Dilma Rousseff, with the release of a report recommending that lawmakers vote in favor of her trial before the Senate.
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Rousseff is accused of presiding over large-scale fiddling of government accounts to mask the depth of budgetary shortfalls during her reelection in 2014.
The two men next in line to stand in for Ms Rousseff should she be suspended are also facing legal trouble over allegations of corruption.
“The facts show serious indications of unconstitutionality, illegality and fiscal irresponsibility”, Jovair Arantes said in a almost 130-page report.
The commission is scheduled to vote on whether to adopt his recommendation early next week, but even if the panel voted against it, the impeachment process would be subject to a vote in the entire lower House of Deputies. It speeds along a process that is expected to culminate by mid-month.
Arantes had been asked by the committee to review the case and report back. “These labels don’t worry me”, Arantes wrote.
Rousseff, 68, needs at least 172 votes against impeachment or abstentions in the lower house. That was a major blow but it didn’t spark the pullout of other, smaller parties that many political observers had expected. By stepping down, analysts said, Temer removed himself from the awkward position in which his party has been questioning the legitimacy of a Rousseff government that he is still part of.
In a boost for Rousseff’s chances of surviving impeachment, the centrist Progressive Party said Wednesday it will remain in her governing coalition until the lower house votes on whether to impeach the embattled leftist leader or not.
Maluf himself has been convicted of money laundering in France and can not leave Brazil because he is on an Interpol wanted list.
“This takes away some of the momentum for her impeachment”, said Sonia Fleury, a political scientist at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a business school and think tank in Rio de Janeiro.
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President of Chamber of Deputies of Brazil Eduardo Cunha (4th-L-Up) and former Brazilian Minister of Brazilian Civil Aeronautics, Eliseu Padilha (4th-R-Up) react during a meeting of national directorate of Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMBD) in Brasilia, capital of Brazil, on March 29, 2016.
