Brazil Congress to vote on president’s corruption case
BRASILIA: Brazil’s lower house of Congress was set to vote Wednesday on whether President Michel Temer should stand trial for corruption — and the deeply unpopular center-right leader is expected to survive easily.
The canny 77-year-old veteran of Brasilia’s notoriously corrupt political scene has struck a confident tone ahead of the vote, painting himself as needed at the helm of the country’s cautious recovery from a deep recession.
The first president in the country to face criminal charges while in office, Temer is accused of obstruction of justice and racketeering. He denies any wrongdoing.
For opposition deputy Jose Guimaraes, from the leftist Workers’ Party, this is an opportunity to ditch Temer, who took over in 2016 from impeached president Dilma Rousseff.
“This government no longer has the moral, institutional or political conditions to keep governing,” Guimaraes said.
However, a two-thirds majority is required in the lower house of Congress to have Temer’s case sent to the Supreme Court. Anything less and the case will be dropped as long as he remains in office.
Just as occurred in August, when Congress threw out an earlier criminal charge, Temer’s allies are expected to reject a trial.
This time, “there could be a few more or a few less votes than the first time, but the president will not fall,” a source in the presidency told AFP, asking not to be identified.
Ironically, what makes it easier for Temer is that many of those judging him in the lower house — 185 of the 513 deputies — are themselves targets of anti-corruption probes.
Critics say the president is also boosting his chances of survival through blatant vote buying, opening up the budgetary purse to give Congress members the projects back in their home states that will help their own causes.