The impeachment petition will now go before the senate, which could suspend Ms Rousseff for 180 days if it votes to open a trial.
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“Impeachment!” screamed the front-page headline of the Folha de Sao Paulo on Monday.
Philip Jennings, referring to the ongoing impeachment proceedings of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, said the feeling on the ground was that “the political stability we have enjoyed there is about to be shattered”. Government supporters who came to protest the impeachment dismantled their camps and prepared to go home.
The lower house of Brazil’s Congress voted on Sunday to impeach Rousseff and if the Senate agrees to consider the measure, she’ll be suspended while a trial is conducted.
Analysts are skeptical she will be able to hold onto power, noting she failed in Sunday’s lower house vote to win the support of parties that had always been part of her governing coalition.
Currently, it remains unclear if Rousseff will, in fact, exit Brazil’s government, or if Temer will take over as president – given he’s also facing accusations similar to Rousseff’s.
“It is good for Brazilian markets in several ways”, said Dan Raghoonundon, Latin American portfolio manager at Janus Capital Group, an investment firm in Denver. Of the 594 members of the House, as the Globe and Mail reported yesterday, “318 are under investigation or face charges” while their target, President Rousseff, “herself faces no allegation of financial impropriety”.
Some party insiders said Rousseff and Lula had persuaded enough wavering lawmakers to vote in their favour or abstain.
In her remarks, Rousseff compared her current situation to the torture she suffered under the dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985, and denied having committed a crime.
A close ally of the president lamented that many of her colleagues had “betrayed” Rousseff. However, the speed of the process depends on Senate leader Renan Calheiros, who could potentially drag out for months any trial and final decision on whether she should be removed from office.
The sight left little doubt that Rousseff would not be in this predicament if she were not so widely disliked, blamed for the worst economic crisis in 80 years and compounding corruption scandals. At the same time, a broad swath of the population attributes its rise from poverty to her Workers Party and decried the vote as anti-democratic.
Cheering and confetti burst from opposition ranks when the vote passed, countered by jeering from Rousseff allies – a snapshot of the divisive mood consuming the country just four months before Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympics.
Nevertheless, opinion polls show more than 60% of Brazilians support impeaching Rousseff, less than two years after the leftist leader narrowly won re-election.
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“I want to see all the corrupt politicians in jail”, he said. “We lost because the coup-mongers were stronger”.
