Brazil"s Senate Votes To Impeach President Dilma Rousseff

Ronaldo Caiado Discurso ARREBATADOR "CANALHAS SÃO AQUELES " Impeachment Dilma Rousseff - 31/08/2016

Three months after suspending President Dilma Rousseff over charges she manipulated government funds to cover up debts, Brazil"s Senate voted to impeach her on Wednesday.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Today, a dramatic scene in the Brazilian capital of Brasilia.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRAZILIAN SENATE ANNOUNCEMENT)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking Brazilian Portuguese).

SHAPIRO: Senators chose to impeach the country"s president, Dilma Rousseff, by a vote of 61 to 20.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Speaking Brazilian Portuguese).

SHAPIRO: After the announcement, senators joined together singing the national anthem.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HINO NACIONAL BRASILEIRO")

UNIDENTIFIED PEOPLE: (Singing in Brazilian Portuguese).

SHAPIRO: Joining us from the senate now is NPR"s Lulu Garcia-Navarro. And, Lulu, what does this historic vote mean for Brazil?

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: Well, it"s a very important moment, as you can imagine. It"s an enormous defeat for Dilma Rousseff and her leftist Workers" Party. And while it moves Brazil out of the immediate political crisis that it"s been facing for many months now with the new president, Michel Temer, at the helm, it hardly, Ari, heals the wounds of this divisive process.

You know, many people will be deeply upset by this. Also, let"s not forget Brazil is still in the midst of a huge financial crisis - 11 percent unemployment. And there"s a massive corruption investigation still underway that has implicated many, including the new president, Michel Temer. So certainly the end of one era, but not an easy path forward for Brazil.

SHAPIRO: Rousseff has maintained her innocence from the beginning. Remind us how we got here.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah. As with everything, it depends who you speak to. Supporters of Dilma Rousseff see this as a coup. I was speaking to the head of the Union for Domestic Workers yesterday. And she said under Rouseff"s tenure, rights and protections for domestic workers and other vulnerable people expanded, so she"s a huge supporter.

But let"s not forget this is not only the end of Rousseff"s era, but it"s the end of 13 years of leftist rule in Latin America"s largest economy. And that will have profound implications for the country and the region. Michel Temer, the new president, is right of center. So is his cabinet. On the other side, those who support Michel Temer say that she sank the economy. She"s a financial dinosaur, as one analyst told me, who couldn"t change her ways when ill economic winds began blowing.

SHAPIRO: How are ordinary Brazilians reacting to all of this?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: There really haven"t been protests. Not a lot of people out on the streets after the vote was taken. I think people are exhausted by this drama, but we have to remember that this impeachment was driven by the largest protests in Brazil"s history. And after the announcement, there were fireworks in some city neighborhoods across the country celebrating Rousseff"s removal. Some people will definitely see this as a fresh start. Dilma Rousseff herself spoke after the vote. She called the new government that has taken over racist, misogynistic and homophobic, and she predicted fierce opposition to its policies.

SHAPIRO: Well, what do you expect we will see from the Brazilian government in the way of new policies?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, certainly, Temer is right of center, but he is hugely unpopular. Many see him as illegitimate, as tainted, so he is not going to have an easy ride. He will be in power for the next two years, seeing out the rest of Dilma Rousseff"s term, but he will face a lot of opposition. People are very divided here on the direction in which the country should go.

SHAPIRO: That"s NPR"s Lulu Garcia-Navarro in Brasilia on the historic impeachment vote ousting Dilma Rousseff. Thank you, Lulu.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You"re welcome.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2016/08/31/492133059/brazils-senate-votes-to-impeach-president-dilma-rousseff

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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff ousted in impeachment vote

Brésil : la présidente Dilma Rousseff destituée

BRASILIA President Dilma Rousseff was stripped of her office Wednesday in the culmination of a political crisis that has left Latin Americas largest nation adrift, with an economy in deep recession and a public sharply divided over the countrys future.

Rousseff was impeached on arcane charges having to do with violating budget laws. But she was swept up in a tide of revulsion against Brazils political class as the once-flourishing economy contracted and political parties were tarred by a massive corruption scandal.

[Brazils Dilma Rousseff makes impassioned speech to stay in office]

Wednesdays 61-to-20 Senate vote closed out an extraordinary 13-year rule by the leftist Workers Party, which boasted of lifting tens of millions of Brazilians out of poverty before the economy began to nosedive and its political fortunes soured.

Rousseff was replaced by her former vice president and coalition partner, Michel Temer, who has been running Brazil as interim president since she was suspended to face the impeachment trial in May. He belongs to the more conservative Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, and is trying to introduce austerity measures to right the economy.

Brazil"s embattled president, Dilma Rousseff, is no longer the country"s top politician. The judgment ends a a protracted process which began last December when the impeachment request got the green light in Brazil"s lower house. (Marina Lopes, Dom Phillips, Jason Aldag / The Washington Post)

But Temer is as unpopular as Rousseff, and whether he can muster the political support for such changes was unclear.

Still, some Brazilians felt a sense of relief that the country had at last reached a decision on an impeachment process it began eight months ago.

[Brazils terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year]

The impeachment does not in any way resolve the political or economic crisis, but it gives us some hope, because for the first time in a long time, we will have a plan, said Lucas de Arago, director of Arko Advice, a political analysis firm in Brasilia.

Rousseffs removal marked the latest setback for Latin Americas left, which had been on the ascendancy just a few years ago in Argentina, Venezuela and other countries but has increasingly struggled amid a continent-wide economic slowdown and a series of corruption scandals.

The leftist governments of Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia recalled their ambassadors from Brazil on Wednesday after the vote, denouncing a coup by its Senate.

Indeed, many Brazilians believe Rousseff was removed not so much for her misdeeds as for her plunging popularity ratings. The impeachment trial may leave a legacy of distrust in Brazils political system, particularly among Workers Party supporters. There were demonstrations in cities across Brazil protesting the impeachment on Wednesday.

The trial ended with a series of emotional speeches in which the sympathizers of Brazils first female president made clear they felt the process was unjust.

Scoundrels! Sen. Lindbergh Farias, a member of her Workers Party, roared at one point.

Coup mongers! History wont forgive you! Rousseffs supporters chanted at another point. She was not present in the Senate for the vote.

Brazils highly respected former chief justice, Joaquim Barbosa, attacked the impeachment process.

It is highly embarrassing. All of a sudden highly conservative forces took over all of Brazil, he tweeted.

For her part, Rousseff responded by calling the Senate ruling the second coup she had faced in her life after a military takeover decades ago. The second [coup], delivered by way of a judicial farce, took me down from a role the people elected me to, she said in a speech delivered to supporters and former colleagues.

Rousseff came to power in January 2011 at a time when the country was booming and the Workers Party led by her predecessor and political mentor, Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, known as Lula was widely popular. She was reelected in 2014. But slumping oil prices and what many called inept political management dragged down the economy, which shrunk nearly 4percent last year while inflation and unemployment surged. The country lost its precious investment grade rating.

Meanwhile, millions of Brazilians took to the streets to protest an enormous corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras that has ensnared politicians from Rousseffs party and its allies.

Since Temer became interim leader in May, there have been signs of a recovery of economic confidence, such as a reduction in credit default swap numbers. That indicates a drop in the level of risk that investors see in Brazil, said Armando Castelar, a professor of economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Temer is regarded as a wily political operator and has extensive congressional experience.

I think he can put Brazil back on some kind of track, said Heron do Carmo, a professor of economics at the University of Sao Paulo.

But there are already cracks showing in his coalition, with some party chiefs threatening to leave the alliance.

On Wednesday, the center-right Brazilian Social Democratic Party warned the new president that he needed to prove he was serious about tough fiscal reforms.

Temers party needs to clearly state the level of its compromise with this government and the agenda of reforms that need to be put before the National Congress immediately, said Aecio Neves, the partys president.

Meanwhile, Temers popularity has plunged since he became interim president and immediately appointed an all-male cabinet. Within weeks, two of his ministers quit after being secretly recorded apparently plotting to obstruct the popular Petrobras investigation.

Many believe Temer could also still be embroiled in the Petrobras case, which has led to investigations of politicians from his party as well as Rousseffs for alleged receipt of bribes and kickbacks.

A former Petrobras executive cooperating with the investigation has said that Temer asked for an illicit $400,000 campaign donation in 2012 for his partys candidate for mayor of Sao Paulo. Temer denied the allegation.

The problem is if there is a bruising denunciation against Michel Temer, said Jairo Nicolau, a professor of political science at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Brazil has now impeached two of the four presidents it has elected since returning to democracy in 1985 after two decades of military dictatorship.

We had four presidents elected, and two were removed. What democracy is this? Sen. Jorge Viana of the Workers Party asked in a speech during the voting session.

Rousseff was charged with financial irregularities using government banks to temporarily fund social programs and issuing spending decrees without congressional approval. Her opponents maintained that her actions contributed to the recession, the worst in decades in Brazil.

Rousseff maintained her innocence, saying she engaged in practices typical for Brazilian politicians. She has accused Temer of being one of the protagonists of the effort to oust her.

During questioning by senators on Monday, she denounced the trial as a coup and referred to the torture she suffered as a young Marxist guerrilla imprisoned by Brazils military dictatorship in the 1970s.

I was scared of death, of the marks of torture on my body and my soul, she said. Today I only fear the death of democracy.

Temer shot back at Rousseff at a meeting with ministers Wednesday that was open to journalists, according to O Globo newspaper.

A coup monger is someone who violates the constitution, he declared.

Phillips reported from Rio de Janeiro.

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