Rousseff’s presidency enters impeachment countdown

BRASILIA, Brazil – Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff entered the final straight Tuesday, April 12, of a desperate battle to save her presidency ahead of an impeachment vote in Congress this weekend.

In a ruthless and complex contest, supporters and opponents of Brazil’s first female president raced to amass the votes that will either send her to trial in the Senate or torpedo the procedure.

After a congressional committee voted to recommend Rousseff’s ouster in chaotic and bad-tempered scenes late Monday, the stage was set for this weekend’s showdown.

On Tuesday, the controversial speaker of the lower house of Congress, Eduardo Cunha, was expected to present the formal impeachment document to the chamber. Deputies were then due to start debating Friday with a vote pencilled in for Sunday.

In the committee, a simple majority was enough to push the case along, but the full house requires a two-thirds majority, or 342 deputies, to send Rousseff’s case to the Senate.

Anything less and Rousseff – accused of fiddling accounts to mask the dire state of the government budget during her 2014 re-election – will walk out with her job.

The latest survey of the 513 deputies in the lower house by Estadao daily on Monday showed 299 favoring impeachment and 123 opposed. That left the result in the hands of the 91 deputies still undecided or not stating a position.

Corruption scandals

Rousseff is hugely unpopular as Brazil sinks into its worst recession in decades. The political system has also been paralyzed by a huge corruption scandal at state oil company Petrobras.

In the latest arrest in the probe, dubbed Operation Car Wash, a former senator who helped lead an anti-corruption committee was charged Tuesday with taking more than $1.5 million in bribes to help corrupt companies avoid scrutiny.

Rousseff and allies, led by ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, have fought back hard in the last few days, describing the impeachment drive as a coup plot in disguise.

“I would never have thought that my generation would see putschists trying to overthrow a democratically elected president,” Lula, who ruled from 2003 to 2011, told thousands of supporters Monday in Rio de Janeiro.

He singled out Vice President Michel Temer, who will take over if Rousseff is ousted, and Cunha, who has been charged with stashing millions of dollars in bribes in Swiss accounts.

However, Lula himself is charged with money laundering in a Car Wash-related case, and supporters of impeachment say that Rousseff’s allegedly illegal manipulation of government accounts fits a pattern of incompetence and corruption.

Impeachment procedure

If the lower house does approve Rousseff’s impeachment, the case goes to the Senate.

The Senate must then confirm it will take the case at which point Rousseff would step down for up to 180 days while a trial was held. Temer, who recently left the ruling coalition to enter the opposition, would take over.

To depose Rousseff, the Senate would need to vote by a two-thirds majority, with Temer remaining president.

After winning Monday’s skirmish in the committee, opponents of Rousseff declared they were on a roll.

“It was a victory for the Brazilian people,” said opposition deputy Jovair Arantes, predicting that the result would carry with “strong” pro-impeachment momentum into the full chamber’s vote.

But pro-government deputy Silvio Costa said he was also confident.

“The opposition is very arrogant” after Monday’s committee victory, he said.

There were worries that passions will spill over as the lower house vote approaches. Large crowds of both Rousseff supporters and opponents were expected in the capital Brasilia and will be separated by a metal barrier.

More than 4,000 police and firefighters will be on duty, G1 news site reported, and security has been stepped up at Congress, with heavy restrictions on access to the building. – Eugenia Logiuratto and Damian Wroclavsky, AFP/Rappler.com