Brazil's
congressional committee votes in favour of impeaching Dilma Rousseff
President
suffers damaging setback as committee sets stage for full vote in
lower house of Congress later this week
Jonathan Watts Latin
America correspondent
Tuesday 12 April
2016 01.00 BST
Brazil’s president
Dilma Rousseff began a week that could make or break her
administration with a bruising defeat in a Congressional impeachment
committee.
After a bad-natured
and at times chaotic debate, the members on the committee voted 38 to
27 to proceed with a motion to remove the Workers’ party leader
from office for puffing up government accounts before the 2014
election.
Their decision sets
the stage for a full vote of the lower house - most likely this
weekend - on whether to approve the country’s first presidential
impeachment.
Rousseff’s
supporters – who claim the impeachment drive represents a coup –
will take consolation from their share of votes on the committee. If
repeated in the plenary, their opponents will fail to secure the
two-thirds majority needed for the motion to advance to the Senate.
But much can happen
in the next six days in a political tussle that has more plot twists
and political drama than than a series of House of Cards.
The latest surprise
was a leaked speech by vice president, Michel Temer that appeared to
show him preparing to move into the president’s palace and
establish a government of national unity and salvation.
Temer told reporters
the audio message was intended for a politician close to him who had
asked if he was prepared to govern in the case that Rousseff were to
be impeached. He said the message was mistakenly sent to the wrong
group on text messaging service WhatsApp. Workers’s Party officials
accused him of betraying his running mate.
This raised the
already high political temperature in Brasilia, where demonstrators
have already begun gathering outside Congress. Public security
officials expect pro- and anti-impeachment rallies to attract
hundreds of thousands by the time of the plenary vote. To prevent
violent clashes, thousands of troops will be deployed alongside the
police and barricades have been erected on the main esplanade to
separate the two sides.
Apart from
occasional scuffles, most of the tension has so far been released in
Congress and public statements. Rousseff’s supporters have put up a
spirited fight. Attorney general José Eduardo Cardozo, condemned
what he called a “flawed” process.
“It is absurd to
dismiss a president who has not committed crimes, nor stolen a
penny,” he said. “Such a process without crime or fraud would be
a coup.” But he and other allies were overwhelmed in the televised
committee meeting.
Antônio Imbassahy
said his opposition Social Democratic party votes for impeachment
“because it understands that Brazil does not deserve to be governed
by a president who has committed crimes of responsibility in a
conscious and continuous way, who lied to the Brazilian people, who
defrauded the elections, who violated democracy, who destroyed the
economy”, he said. “The final judgement is ahead. The votes will
be registered in history. And history does not forgive.”
The committee defeat
was expected. Since the biggest party in Congress – the Brazil
Democratic Movement party (PMDB) – declared it would abandon the
ruling coalition last month, Rousseff has effectively been leading a
minority government.
The president is
also on the ropes as a result of economic recession, corruption
scandals and plots by the PMDB and other parties to seize power.
But Rousseff, who
has more than two years of her mandate left to run, is far from being
knocked out.
Her opponents are
not assured of the two-thirds of the 513 seats they need in the lower
house. Even if they get this level of support, impeachment will also
have to be approved twice by the Senate – first by a simple
majority, then by two-thirds – before it is finalised. The
government can also challenge the process in the supreme court.
Public opinion is
another factor. Despite her own dismal approval ratings, which hover
around the 10% mark, most of Rousseff’s rivals are even more
despised and are accused of equal or greater wrongdoing.
The impeachment
process has been spearheaded by lower house Speaker Eduardo Cunha, a
PMDB leader who is accused of taking more than $5m (£3.5m) in
kickbacks from state-run oil company Petrobras and lying to Congress
about secret bank accounts in Switzerland.
Rousseff’s most
likely replacement is Temer, also of the PMDB, who also faces
impeachment proceedings because he signed off on the same policies as
the president. More than half of the 65-member impeachment committee
are also charged with bribery or other crimes.
Compared with these
accusations, the penalty for the president’s alleged wrongdoing is
of questionable proportionality. Her administration was not the first
to temporarily window-dress government finances, but none of her
predecessor faced repercussions of this severity. The Workers’
party claims this represents a “coup”. This accusation was echoed
by former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, musician Chico
Buarques and other artists on Monday night at a rally of several
thousand anti-impeachment supporters under the Lapa arches in Rio de
Janeiro.
Many of those who
dislike the ruling party do not use this term, but they are
uncomfortable about the threat to democracy posed by the removal of
an elected president on such flimsy grounds.
Overall, support for
impeachment remains high, but appears to be ebbing. A Datafolha poll
at the weekend, showed 61% of respondents favoured Rousseff’s
removal, down from 68% in March.
The last president
to come so close to impeachment was Fernando Collor de Mello who
resigned in 1992 on the eve of his conviction by the Senate.
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