Rousseff fights impeachment in Brazil’s embattled senate
BRASILIA: Angry quarrels erupted at suspended Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment trial on Friday, while her key ally, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, faced corruption charges on a day of turmoil for Latin America’s largest country.
Day two of Ms Rousseff’s Senate trial in the capital Brasilia began with shouting matches that forced Supreme Court Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski to put the session temporarily on hold until tempers calmed.
Senate president Renan Calheiros called the row, prompted by a Rousseff loyalist’s questioning of the notoriously corrupt Senate’s moral authority, “a demonstration of infinite stupidity”. This senate “is a madhouse”, Mr Calheiros said.
About two-thirds of the senators have current or past brushes with the law, according to corruption watchdog Transparencia Brasil.
Ms Rousseff, 68, is accused of breaking the law by taking unauthorised state bank loans to cover up budgetary shortfalls during her 2014 re-election.
She says the budgetary manoeuvres were legal, describing herself as victim of a right-wing power grab after 13 years’ rule by her leftist Workers’ Party.
Witnesses for the defence were called on Friday following the trial’s opening day on Thursday, when the case against Ms Rousseff was presented.
One witness, economist Luiz Gonzaga Belluzo, insisted that Ms Rousseff did not violate the law, and that ousting her would be “an attack on democracy”.
The session ended at 9am Thailand time yesterday, and was set to resume at 8pm last night.
Ms Rousseff is planning to testify on Monday in a dramatic last-ditch attempt to save herself before senators vote — with analysts widely predicting her defeat.
At stake is not just Ms Rousseff’s fate, but that of the once mighty Workers’ Party.
Its founder, Mr Lula, faced his own mounting problems after police on Friday filed a request for corruption and money laundering charges linking him to a vast embezzlement and bribery scheme at state oil company Petrobras.
Mr Lula’s lawyer Cristiano Zanin Martins said Mr Lula was innocent and targeted by a politically motivated case.
“Once again there is an act that by a strange coincidence occurs at a politically important moment for the country,” he told a news conference in Sao Paulo.