Brazil’s Senate in May suspended Rousseff from office pending impeachment proceedings later this month over charges she manipulated government accounts to obscure the country’s economic situation during her 2014 re-election campaign.
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The committee’s vote is scheduled tomorrow, the eve of the Olympic opening ceremony.
Brazil’s political turmoil appears to have prompted many heads of state to stay away from Rio’s Olympics due to kick off with an opening ceremony directed by Fernando Meirelles, the director of the acclaimed movie City of God, about kids in Rio’s favelas. If she is removed from office, he will become the full-fledged president until elections in 2018.
A vote possibly on September 2 to permanently remove Rousseff from the presidency would require the support of two-thirds of the Senate, or 54 upper-house lawmakers.
Anastasia was clear about what should happen.
The report said Rousseff committed a “crime against the Constitution”, by delaying government payments to banks and asking for additional loans from public banks without seeking Congressional approval.
The report, compiled by Senator Antonio Anastasia, from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), received 14 votes in favor, five against and one abstention by the commission members, who are in charge of looking into the case against Rousseff.
Rousseff’s removal would mark and end to 13 years of leftist Worker’s Party rule over Latin America’s largest economy.
What would it mean if she were impeached?
The impeachment process is continuing even as the country hosts the Summer Olympics, a major worldwide event Ms. Rousseff and her predecessor and political mentor Luiz Iná cio Lula da Silva fought hard to bring to Brazil.
The combination of Olympics and impeachment “is the picture of a Brazilian tragedy. It’s the end of the myth created by Lula”, said Ricardo Antunes, a sociologist at Unicamp University in Sao Paulo.
“The president is an honest and worthy woman”, said Senator Katia Abreu, from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, who served as Ms. Rousseff’s Agriculture minister.
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Temer, meanwhile, is maintaining a relatively low profile as he prepares to take over on a formal basis.
