Dilma’s days numbered

BRASILIA. – Brazil’s Senate opened the impeachment trial of suspended President Dilma Rousseff (pictured below)yesterday and will hear witnesses for and against the leader who is expected to be removed from office next week on charges of breaking budget laws. Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, will appear before the 81 senators next Monday to defend herself, but her opponents are confident they have more than the 54 votes needed to convict her in a trial presided over by Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski.Authorities prepared barriers to contain demonstrations outside Brazil’s modernistic Congress building, but few Rousseff supporters have turned out, pointing to the isolation of the impeached president.

“Every one of you should vote as an individual and not according to party,” Lewandowski said in his opening remarks, reminding senators that they had become judges and must put aside their political views.

If the final vote, which is expected late on Tuesday or in the early hours of Wednesday next week, goes against Rousseff it would confirm her vice president, Michel Temer, as Brazil’s new leader for the rest of her term through 2018, ending 13 years of leftwing Workers Party (PT) rule.

A poll published by O Globo newspaper yesterday showed that 51 senators were committed to voting to dismiss Rousseff, with only 19 supporting her and 11 undecided.

Rousseff is charged with spending without Congressional approval and manipulating government accounts to disguise the extent of the deficit in the run-up to her 2014 re-election.

Temer’s right-leaning government held last-minute talks with senators and political parties to shore up votes against Rousseff, who has denied any wrongdoing and described efforts to oust her as a “coup”. She has said such accounting practices were also commonly used by previous governments.

However, her trial has become a test of political support for Rousseff amid the deepest recession in at least 80 years in Brazil.

Temer aides said they expected at least 60 senators to vote against Rousseff. – Reuters.

You Might Also Like

Comments