Rousseff on trial; 13 yrs of Left rule ends in Brazil
Centrist Vice-President Michel Temer will take the helm of the country
Brazil’s Senate voted on Thursday 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 20hour 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 woman 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 on Thursday 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 per cent of its annual economic output, Brazil is suffering from rising unemployment, plummeting investment and a projected economic contraction of more than 3 per cent this year.
“Only major reforms can keep Brazil from moving from crisis to crisis,” says Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, an economist and author in Sao Paulo who has written extensively about the country’s socioeconomic 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 central Paulista Avenue of Brazil’s largest city, Sao 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 last 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 center, 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 made a lastditch effort to annul her impeachment but it was rejected by the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Senate Speaker Renan Calheiros said Rousseff will be notified of the upper house’s decision on Thursday morning and will have to leave Brasilia’s Planalto presidential palace, though she can continue to live in her official residence, have a staff and use an air force plane as suspended head of state.