Rousseff faces trial in hostile senate
Decision to impeach leftist president leaves Brazil mired in political uncertainty
BRAZIL’S senate voted yesterday to put leftist President Dilma Rousseff on trial in a historic decision brought on by a deep recession and a corruption scandal that will now confront her successor, vice-president Michel Temer.
With Rousseff to be suspended during the senate trial for allegedly breaking budget rules, the centrist Temer will take the helm of a country that again finds itself mired in political and economic volatility after a recent decade of prosperity.
The 55-22 vote ends more than 13 years of rule by the left-wing Workers Party, which rose from Brazil’s labour movement and helped pull millions of people out of poverty before seeing many of its leaders tainted by corruption investigations.
Fireworks rang out in cities across Brazil after the vote at the end of a 20-hour session in the senate. Police had briefly clashed with pro-Rousseff demonstrators in Brasilia on Wednesday, exchanging volleys of tear gas and rocks.
Rousseff, a 68-year-old economist and former Marxist guerrilla who was Brazil’s first female president, is unlikely to be acquitted in a trial that could last as long as six months.
A two-thirds majority is needed in the senate to convict her, but the scale of her defeat yesterday showed that the opposition already has the support it needs.
“Impeachment is a tragedy for the country… It is a bitter though necessary medicine,” opposition Senator Jose Serra, tipped to become foreign minister under Temer, said during the debate. “But having the Rousseff government continue would be a bigger tragedy. Brazil’s situation would be unbearable.”
The impeachment process began in the lower house of congress in December. Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing and called her impeachment a “coup”.
Temer, a 75-year-old centrist and constitutional scholar who spent decades in Brazil’s congress, now faces the challenge of restoring economic growth and calm at a time when Brazilians, increasingly polarised, are questioning whether their institutions can deliver on his promise of stability.
In addition to a towering budget deficit, equal to more than 10 percent of its annual economic output, Brazil is suffering from rising unemployment, plummeting investment and a projected economic contraction of more than 3 percent this year.
“Only major reforms can keep Brazil from moving from crisis to crisis,” said Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, an economist and author in São Paulo who has written extensively about the country’s socio-economic problems.
But those changes, including an overhaul of pension, tax and labour laws and a political reform to streamline fragmented parties in a mercenary congress, could remain elusive at a time of turmoil.
While opposition supporters celebrated in the middle of Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, many Brazilians are concerned that the end of Workers Party rule could bring back bad times for the poor, who have made great strides in the past decade.
“Has Dilma made mistakes? Of course. But the Workers Party has done so much for us, for the people,” said Benedito Polongo, a 63-year-old janitor outside a shiny Brasilia business centre, who said he had no job or bank account before the party came to power. “I fear that those who come after her will erase all that has been done for the poor.”
Rousseff’s government had tried to annul her impeachment but the Supreme Court rejected the bid yesterday. – Reuters