Brazil’s suspended President Dilma Rousseff has accused her critics of using trumped charges against her to trample on the country’s democracy. Pro-impeachment senators say they will easily reach the needed two-thirds majority – 54 of 81 senators – to remove her from office.
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Suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff waves goodbye after her impeachment trial at the Federal Senate in Brasilia, Brazil, Monday, Aug. 29, 2016.
Passionate closing arguments by Rousseff’s accusers and speeches by her allies appeared to do little to tip the balance in her favor on the eve of the impeachment decision.
Brazil’s first female president is out of a job, but not barred from the ballot if she wants to run again. Rousseff’s impeachment is “a foregone conclusion at this point”, Lulu says.
Brazil’s Senate has begun its final session in a trial that will decide the fate of President Dilma Rousseff.
Ms Rousseff is accused of breaking budget laws, but the case has a much more complex background.
“I ask that you be just with an honest president”, she said during her initial address, her voice cracking with emotion. “The fraud was documented”.
The process began late a year ago, with the Chamber of Deputies approving impeachment charges in April and the Senate in May.
Senators want to separate the vote on her removal from the presidency from a ban on holding public office for eight years.
In an emotional speech, she compared the trial to her persecution under Brazil’s 1964-1985 military dictatorship, when she was tortured by security services as a member of a leftist urban guerrilla group.
She called that nonsense, contending she broke no laws and noting previous presidents used similar accounting measures.
On Monday, she mounted that defense in the Senate, arguing that she was forced to make tough choices on the budget in the face of declining revenues and a refusal by opponents in Congress to work with her.
Rousseff’s political fortunes took a dire turn early this year, when Temer’s center-right PMDB party began an exodus from her governing coalition.
For Rousseff to be removed, at least 54 of the 81 senators need to vote in favour.
“The constitution is clear”, she said.”It establishes that in order to start an impeachment process, there needs to be a crime”.
After riding the commodities boom in her first four-year term, Rousseff’s popularity has dwindled to single figures this year, partly because of a massive scandal at state oil company Petrobras and partly due to a deep recession that many Brazilians blame on her government’s interventionist policies. Their response was tepid.
The heir-apparent to former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Rousseff was re-elected by a narrow margin in 2014, but a recession and a cross-party corruption scandal put an end to any political goodwill she might have earned, eventually leading to her ouster/the protracted battle.
He and many top leaders have acknowledged that Rousseff’s chances of surviving the Senate’s final vote are slim. If they vote to impeach her, Ms Rousseff’s former vice president turned political enemy, Michel Temer, will be confirmed as president until elections in 2018.
Rousseff said that Brazilians would never have voted for a man who picked a Cabinet of all white men in a country that is more than 50 percent non-white. The Cabinet that Temer chose in May has been roundly criticized for its lack of diversity, with three ministers were forced to step down within a month of taking office because of corruption allegations.
A strong vote to oust Rousseff would help Temer take the hard measures needed to restore confidence in Brazil’s economy, which is caught in a two-year recession, de Freitas said.
She said that corrupt politicians conspired to oust her to derail the investigation into billions in bribes at the oil giant.
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“Dilma is defending herself with a lot of dignity and intelligence, but the senators came here with their minds made up”, said Senator Regina Sousa of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party. Watchdog groups estimate 60 percent of the 594 lawmakers in both chambers are being investigated for wrongdoing, many for corruption related to the Petrobras probe.
