Brazil’s Congress to vote on Temer’s corruption trial
BRASÍLIA: Brazil’s centre-right President Michel Temer faces a vote by lawmakers yesterday to decide whether to put him on trial for corruption in the latest political turmoil shaking Latin America’s biggest country.
A deeply unpopular veteran of the ruling PMDB party, Temer is accused of taking bribes from a meatpacking industry executive — part of a wider scandal sucking in major politicians of every stripe.
If two-thirds of deputies in the lower house of Congress accept the charge, Temer will be suspended for 180 days and face trial at the Supreme Court. The upheaval comes only 12 months after the same lawmakers ejected Temer’s leftist predecessor Dilma Rousseff in an impeachment trial.
Analysts say Temer has enough support to stop a two-thirds majority, in which case the charge would be thrown out.
The first question, however, is whether the vote will take place. Many in the opposition have vowed not to show up, preventing the chamber from reaching the necessary quorum of two-thirds or 342 deputies.
The strategy would be to postpone the vote and increase pressure on Temer, who has been lobbying energetically for it to go ahead so that he can put the issue behind him.
“Every day, new information comes in on other corruption cases involving the government,” Paul Pimento, from Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party, said.
“The more of this that comes to the attention of voters and Congress, the greater the chances of us getting the votes to remove Temer.”
Temer is the highest-profile target in the Operation Car Wash anti-graft probe, which has uncovered rampant bribery and embezzlement in big business and high politics.
He has historically low five per cent approval ratings and expectations are that top prosecutor Rodrigo Janot could file a second criminal charge — for obstruction of justice — in the coming weeks.
In the current charge, Temer is alleged to have been the intended recipient of US$150,000 in cash that a close aide was caught carrying in a suitcase in Sao Paulo. The money was allegedly part of a steady flow of bribes to Temer from the JBS meatpacking giant.
In a separate investigation, prosecutors cite a secretly recorded late-night meeting between Temer and one of JBS’s owners, Joesley Batista. In the recording, Temer allegedly is heard authorising hush money payments to a onetime senior politician convicted of corruption, Eduardo Cunha.
Batista gave prosecutors the recording as part of his cooperation in a plea deal, one of the many that Car Wash investigators have used to build graft cases. — AFP