The Brazilian Senate made a decision to go ahead with impeachment procedures against the country’s suspended President Dilma Rousseff.
Advertisement
She stands accused of taking out loans from state-controlled banks to finance public spending, which is illegal under Brazilian law, and moving budget funds around without congressional authorization.
The last stage of Ms. Rousseff’s trial in the Senate will be overseen by Ricardo Lewandowski, the president of Brazil’sFederal Supreme Court, and Ms. Rousseff might appear before Senators in person as part of her defense.
The Senate move is likely to strengthen Temer’s hand as he strives to establish his legitimacy and stabilize Brazil politically.
If senators back an impeachment trial – as is expected – a two-thirds majority would be needed in the final vote, due in the week after the Olympics closing ceremony.
The vote follows the approval of a report by a Senate special committee on August 2 which recommended that Rousseff be put on trial.
Rousseff is a former leftist guerrilla who was jailed and tortured by the country’s military regime in the 1970s and followed Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the second Workers’ Party president in 2011.
Suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff speaks during a press conference in Brasilia, Brazil, in January.
Speaking before the vote, Workers party senator Regina Sousa said: “We know we won’t win tonight”.
If Rousseff is removed from office, Temer, her center-right running mate turned opponent, will become the full-fledged president until the next presidential election in 2018.
Government officials expect 60 senators to vote for a trial, which is six more than needed to eventually convict her. Her allies have argued that opposing lawmakers are embroiled in far worse corruption cases.
Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing and denounced her impeachment as a rightwing conspiracy to illegally remove a government that improved the lot of Brazil’s poorer classes, by using an accounting technicality as a legal pretext.
In the document Rousseff will confirm her readiness to hold general elections, if citizens support it and the impeachment initiative is rejected.
The president herself denounced the impeachment process as a plot of the office of Vice President Michel Temer, whose hard relationship with Rousseff turned into full-blown hostility and culminated in the dissolution of the alliance between Rousseff’s Workers’ Party and Temer’s Brazilian Democratic Movement Party earlier this year.
Advertisement
However, Temer himself may be implicated in the allegations of corruption.
