The daily O Globo forecast that 297 lawmakers out of a total 513 will vote against Cunha-40 more than the minimum required.
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Brazil’s lower house of Congress has voted overwhelmingly to strip the legislative seat from its former speaker amid accusations of corruption and obstruction of justice.
Cunha has used a variety of stalling tactics to slow the proceedings that could lead to his ouster from Congress. Analysts say he will play his final card Monday by asking his peers to delay a vote on his fate until after October municipal elections.
Shortly after hearings began in December, Cunha launched the impeachment process against Rousseff, who was removed from office by the Senate on August 31 for breaking budgetary rules and decreeing public spending without Congressional approval. “They wanted a trophy”, Cunha said at a news conference. Mr. Cunha is a legendary deal-maker who cultivated a conservative block of Congress members (who voted with him against Ms. Rousseff), reportedly by using off-books funds to get them elected.
He blamed his removal on the impeachment of Rousseff.
During the first hours of the session, only one lawmaker, Carlos Marun, stood by Cunha, who was once considered the most powerful politician in Brazil.
“This is all because I opened the impeachment proceedings”.
Mr. Cunha is a deeply unpopular politician – a survey by a national polling firm earlier this year found 77 per cent of Brazilians thought he should lose his seat, compared to 63 per cent who thought the president must go – but he has long had an aura of political invincibility, because he was said to be the keeper of secrets in Brasilia. In Brazil, only the country’s top court can decide to charge and try federal lawmakers.
Now the corruption allegations against him will be investigated by a lower court judge seen as harsher than the top court, which was dealing with the cases until now. Prosecutors accuse Cunha of corruption and money laundering for his role in negotiating contracts for drill ships and say he received an illegal payment of $5 million. But his fellow lawmakers are deciding only on whether he lied about having secret banking accounts in Switzerland. Brazilian investigators say Cunha also has had undeclared accounts in the USA since 1990 totaling more than $20 million.
Cunha denies wrongdoing and has said former president Dilma Rousseff’s supporters are seeking revenge, the BBC reported.
Prosecutors have alleged that Cunha is one of those tied to the Petrobras scandal, in which more than $2 billion in bribes was purportedly paid to obtain inflated contracts from the energy company.
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If he had remained speaker, Cunha would have been next in line for the presidency if anything happened to Temer. Cunha’s power began to erode in the middle of previous year after a plea bargain deal led to testimony linking him to multimillion-dollar Swiss bank accounts.
