Brazil’s Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to indict President Dilma Rousseff on charges of breaking budget laws and to begin an impeachment trial that is expected to oust her from office and end 13 years of rule by the Workers Party.
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Rousseff would be removed if a two-thirds majority of the 81-person Senate votes to convict her.
In a dramatic illustration of the Brazilian people’s dissatisfaction with the interim coup-imposed president Michel Temer, almost every facet of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro – from the torch relay to the declaration of the games’ opening by the Brazilian head of state – has been plagued by political protests due to the legislative suspension of left-leaning President Dilma Rousseff.
“People are outraged, people are furious, people want the reactionary interim President Michel Temer out”.
But Rousseff’s enemies say the die is already cast, and predict her removal once and for all at the impeachment trial that gets under way later this month.
Their leaders included Temer, formerly Rousseff’s vice president and head of the center-right PMDB party in her governing coalition.
Rousseff’s political mentor and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, will face trial over his role in allegedly blocking a corruption investigation into the company. “The left will have to endure the blow”, said Eduardo Pereira, 51, a teacher, referring to the impeachment. “Jingoism has all of a sudden swept the country, and the reactionaries want to benefit from the jingoism and patriotism surrounding the Olympics in order to lift the mood, disregarding the fact that the Olympics were brought to Brazil by Lula and the fact that the opening ceremony of the Games has been a success, boils down to Dilma”.
The real strengthened to 3.13 reais to the dollar on Wednesday.
Rousseff herself is not accused in Brazil’s main scandal, the probe into corruption in the state oil firm Petrobras, which has implicated many of her rivals.
Leonardo Péricles, national coordinator of the Fight in Regions, Villas and Slums (Movimento de Luta nos Bairros, Vilas e Favelas), which is part of the Brazil Without Fear movement (Brasil sem Medo), told Sputnik why current situation in the government is considered a coup.
The uncertainty has hampered his efforts to plug a fiscal crisis inherited from Rousseff, who is blamed for driving the economy into what could be its worst recession since the 1930s. After Rousseff was suspended from office.
Sanders expressed concerns about the impeachment process, which he describes as a coup d’état. “They immediately replaced a diverse and representative administration with a cabinet made up entirely of white men”, wrote Sanders in the statement.
Rousseff, 68, has likened the impeachment drive to a putsch by her political enemies.
Sanders added that The United States can not play a passive role while the Brazil’s democratic system is being attacked by factions encouraged by power’s ambition.
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“The United States can not sit silently while the democratic institutions of one of our most important allies are undermined”.
