Brazil opens impeachment trial

Poll finds 51 senators already plan to vote against Rousseff

Brazil opens impeachment trial

Brazil’s Senate opened the impeachment trial of suspended president Dilma Rousseff on Thursday and will hear witnesses for and against the leftist leader, who is expected to be removed from office next week on charges of breaking budget laws.

Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, will appear before the 81 senators on Monday to defend herself, but her opponents are confident that they have more than the 54 votes needed to convict her in a trial presided over by Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski.

Authorities prepared barriers to contain demonstrations outside Brazil’s modernistic Congress building, but few Rousseff supporters have turned out, highlighting the suspended leader’s isolation.

“Every one of you should vote as an individual and not according to party,” Lewandowski said in his opening remarks, reminding senators that they had become judges and must put aside their political views.

If next week’s final vote – which is expected late Tuesday or in the early hours of Wednesday – goes against Rousseff, it will confirm her former vice president and current acting president, Michel Temer, as Brazil’s new leader for the rest of her term through 2018, ending 13 years of rule by the leftwing Workers’ Party ( PT).

A poll published by O Globo newspaper on Thursday showed that 51 senators were committed to voting to dismiss Rousseff, with only 19 supporting her and 11 undecided.

Temer aides said they expected at least 60 senators to vote against Rousseff.

Rousseff is charged with spending without congressional approval and manipulating government accounts to disguise the extent of the deficit in the run- up to her 2014 reelection.

Temer’s right- leaning government held last- minute talks with senators and political parties to shore up votes against Rousseff, who has denied any wrongdoing and described efforts to oust her as a “coup.” She has said such accounting practices were also commonly used by previous governments.

Rousseff’s trial has become a test of political support for her amid the deepest recession in Brazil in at least 80 years.

If he is confirmed as president by Rousseff’s ouster, Temer would face the daunting task of steering Latin America’s largest economy out of its worst recession since the Great Depression and stanching a budget deficit that topped 10 percent of gross domestic product.

Financial markets have rallied on prospects of a more market- friendly government, but investors and members of Temer’s fragile coalition are concerned that he has yet to unveil measures to drastically curb the deficit.