Brazil delays impeachment until after Olympics – report

BRASÍLIA, Brazil – A vote on whether to remove Brazil’s suspended president Dilma Rousseff from office will be postponed until after the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, a report said Wednesday, June 29.

The impeachment trial in the Senate is already underway but the final ruling on Rousseff’s fate will take place on August 26 at the earliest, the daily O Globo reported, quoting unidentified aides to the Supreme Court justice presiding over the trial, Ricardo Lewandowski.

Originally a date of August 16 had been considered, but that was in the middle of the August 5-21 Olympics, the first ever held in South America.

The date was moved to August 22, although that would still risk heightened political tensions in the closing days of the Games.

Spokesmen for the Supreme Court and the Senate would not confirm or deny the report to Agence France-Presse.

Rousseff was suspended on May 12 in a Senate vote, which followed a similar vote in the lower house. The Senate must next vote by a two thirds majority for her to be stripped definitively of the presidency.

Rousseff is accused of breaking budget laws by taking illegal loans to mask the country’s true financial state.

The leftist leader, 68, says the accounting maneuvers have long been common practice for Brazilian governments and that she is the victim of a right-wing coup.

Her former vice president, center-right leader Michel Temer, has taken over as acting president. He has acted quickly to move the country away from Rousseff’s leftist political platform, saying the sickly economy needs urgent reform. – Rappler.com