Crushing loss for Brazilian president

Lower house votes to send Rousseff to senate

BRAZIL woke yesterday to deep political crisis after lawmakers authorised impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, sparking claims that democracy was under threat in Latin America’s biggest country.

Opposition deputies in the lower house of congress needed 342 of the 513 votes – or a two-thirds majority – to send Rousseff to the senate, which will now decide whether to open a trial. They got there near midnight on Sunday after five hours of voting.

Wild cheering and a burst of confetti erupted from opposition ranks at the 342nd vote, countered by furious jeering from Rousseff allies in a snapshot of the bitter mood consuming Brazil just four months before Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympics.

Presidential chief of staff Jacques Wagner accused deputies of voting for impeachment without proving that the leftist president, who is accused of illegally manipulating budget figures, had committed a serious crime.

“In this way, the Chamber of Deputies is threatening to interrupt 30 years of democracy in the country,” he said, referring to the end of a military dictatorship in 1985.

“It was a coup against democracy,” Rousseff’s attorney-general Jose Eduardo Cardozo said. Cardozo said that Rousseff – who was imprisoned and tortured under military rule in the 1970s – would give her first public reaction yesterday.

There was expected to be a euphoric reaction from the financial markets which have been betting heavily on a Rousseff exit and the advent of a more business-friendly government to kickstart Brazil’s flailing economy. Outside congress, where tens of thousands of people were watching giant TV screens, the split was echoed on a mass scale – with opposition supporters partying and Rousseff loyalists in despair.

“I am happy, happy, happy. I spent a year demonstrating in hope that Dilma would be brought down,” retiree Maristela de Melo, 63, said. But Rousseff supporter Mariana Santos, 23, burst into tears, saying the vote was “a disgrace for our country”.

Several thousand police stood by and the rival camps were separated by a long metal wall.

If, as many expect, the senate goes on to impeach the leftist president, Vice-President Michel Temer – who abandoned Rousseff to become a key opponent – will assume power.

Temer ally Eduardo Cunha, the lower house speaker who engineered the successful impeachment vote, said Rousseff’s days as president were numbered.

“Now Brazil needs to climb out of the bottom of the well and we have to resolve the situation as quickly as possible,” he said. “The senate should move rapidly.”

But opposition celebrations could be shortlived, analysts say.

Temer would inherit a country wallowing in its deepest recession in decades and a dysfunctional political scene where Rousseff’s Workers’ Party vows revenge.

It would not be easy for Temer, said an independent political analyst. “It will be a nightmare.”

Rousseff, 68, is accused of illegal accounting manoeuvres to mask government shortfalls during her 2014 reelection.

Many Brazilians also hold her responsible for the economic mess and a massive corruption scandal centred on state oil company Petrobras – a toxic record that has left her government with 10% approval ratings.

Now the decision by the lower house moves the matter to the senate, which is expected to vote next month on whether to open a trial.

In case of a green light there – which experts consider almost certain – Rousseff would step down for up to 180 days while the trial got under way. But a senior Rousseff ally said there would be no surrender.

“The coup-plotters have won here in the house,” leader of the Workers’ Party in the lower house of congress, Jose Guimaraes said. “President Dilma [Rousseff’s] government recognises this temporary defeat but that does not mean that the war is over.

“The fight will continue in the streets and in the senate.”

Cardozo described Rousseff as “very strong” and able “to fight a good fight”.

Huge opposition rallies involving hundreds of thousands of people over the last months have played a big role in turning pressure against Rousseff into an unstoppable avalanche. — AFP