Senate mulls whether to impeach Rousseff
Brazil’s Senate began the trial of suspended President Dilma Rousseff yesterday after a lengthy impeachment process that has paralysed the politics of Latin America’s largest nation and is expected to culminate in her removal from office next week.
The session, presided over by Supreme Court Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski, heard witnesses for and against Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, who is charged with breaking budget laws.
The leftist leader, whose popularity has been hammered by a deep recession and an immense corruption scandal since she won reelection in 2014, will appear before the 81 senators next Tuesday to defend herself. Her opponents are confident they have more than the 54 votes needed to convict her.
Authorities prepared barriers to contain demonstrations outside Brazil’s Congress building, but virtually no Rousseff supporters turned out.
If the final vote, which is expected on Wednesday or Thursday, goes against Rousseff, it would confirm her vice-president, Michel Temer, as the country’s new leader for the rest of her fouryear term through to 2018, ending 13 years of Left-wing Workers Party rule.
Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla, is charged with spending without congressional approval and manipulating government accounts to mask the extent of Brazil’s growing deficit in the runup to her 2014 re-election.
Her Senate supporters managed to discredit a key witness, a Federal Audit Court prosecutor who led the probe of Rousseff’s government, because he had taken part in an anti-Rousseff demonstration.
Lewandowski ruled that Julio Marcelo de Oliveira could be questioned but his testimony would not count as proof, a development that is not expected to affect the outcome of a trial that is more political than judicial.
A survey published by O Globo newspaper showed that 52 senators were committed to voting to dismiss Rousseff, with only 19 supporting her and 10 undecided or not polled.
Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing and has described efforts to oust her as a ‘‘coup’’. She has refused to resign.
Temer’s Right-leaning government has sought to speed up the trial.