With 55 against 22 votes, the Brazilian 81-seat Senate has suspended President Rousseff for 180 day. The impeachment vote takes immediate effect because, on April 17, 2016 already, Brazil’s lower house had voted to start Rousseff’s impeachment over charges of manipulating government account with 367 Yes to 137 No, with 342 votes needed to impeach her.
The impeachment trial is the second in the history of Brazil after the one against President Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992. He later stepped down from the presidency and later made a comeback. Today, he was one of the senators voting for Dilma Rousseff’s suspension.
Dilma Rousseff was accused of borrowing money from state banks to conceal the real dimension of Brazil’s deficit in order to secure her re-election in October 2014.
The real reason for her suspension should of course be the Petrobras scandal. Several dozen lawmakers are involved in a billion dollar bribery scandal around the semi-public oil company Petrobras. President Dilma Rousseff served as its chairman, overseeing the company as Minister of Mines and Energy. If she was not involved directly, she should have been aware of what was going on. Anyway, she should have stepped down a long time ago.
The man temporarily replacing President Rousseff, Vice-President Michel Temer, is one of the many great hypocrites in Brazilian politics. He has been convicted of violating campaign finance limits. Both of them are a disgrace for Brazilian politics. In addition, lower house speaker Eduardo Cunha was impeached some time ago. Important parts of the political and economic elite were/are involved in both the Petrobras and the Mensalão scandal. A profound clean-up of the Brazilian political scene is needed.
This is not the first major scandal involving the party of former president Luiz Inácia Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. In 2005 already, the Mensalão scandal broke. The Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) was not only responsible for reducing poverty in Brazil through impressive economic growth, key party people also made sure lawmakers would vote for them. Members of Congress were paid some $12,000 per month to vote for legislation favoring the PT. The funds came from advertising budgets of state-owned companies. The investigation showed that not only the PT, but members of other parties too were involved in the bribery scandal. As a consequence, only key advisers to President Lula were forced to resign, the president himself survived the Mensalão scandal.
A long time ago it became clear that the PT, its key representatives and in fact Brazilian politics as a whole were and are shady. The corruption is systemic. The Senate suspension, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff is only one tiny step needed towards cleaner Brazilian politics.
Brazil is in a major economic crisis. In 2015, Brazil’s GDP shrunk by 3.8%. This year, the shrinking process is expected to continue and reach again minus 3.9%. The inflation reached 10% in 2015, the unemployment rate reached 10.2% in February. Wages have fallen 4%. Brazil has no time to waste with corrupt and incompetent politicians.
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According to the NGO Transparência Brasil, roughly 60% of the 594 Brazilian lawmakers (lower and upper house together) have been indicted or convicted for crimes ranging from corruption to murder.
Interim president Michel Temer is under investigation in the Petrobras scandal for illegally receiving over $1.5 million from a construction company that managed to get substantial construction contracts from Petrobras.
Süddeutsche Zeitung reported an unusual high number of Michel Temer’s PMDB politicians and lobbyists showing up in the Panama Papers. Among them is Eduardo Cunha. In short, the PMDB is not more credible than Rousseff’s PT
On August 31, 2016 the Brazilian Senate has definitively removed President Rousseff from office for illegally manipulating the budget. The legally required majority of two-thirds of all Senators was easily reached: 61 out of 81 Senators voted in favor of her impeachment, only 20 opposed it. Rousseff’s vice-president, Michel Temer, will become president until 2018. In a separate vote, the Senate decided with 42 against 36 votes to bar Roussef from public office for eight years.
Bossa Nova CDs & Vinyls from Amazon USA, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de.
Books about Brazil & Brazilian history from Amazon USA, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de.
Palácio do Planalto / Official photograph of President Dilma Rousseff, taken by the official photographer Roberto Stuckert Filho, at Alvorada Palace on January 9th, 2011. Via Wikimedia.
Article added from “old cosmopolis” to our newly designed WordPress pages together with 3 other articles on Brazil (in total 2 in German, 2 in English) on November 15, 2022.
