Brazil’s sacked President Dilma Rousseff waves (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
Brazil’s Senate on Wednesday voted to
remove President Dilma Rousseff from office, the culmination of a yearlong fight that paralyzed Latin America’s largest nation and exposed deep rifts among its people on everything from race relations to social spending.
While Rousseff’s ouster was widely expected,
the decision was a key chapter in a colossal
political struggle that is far from over.
Rousseff was Brazil’s first female president,
with a storied career that includes a stint as a
Marxist guerrilla jailed and tortured in the
1970s during the country’s dictatorship. She
was accused of breaking fiscal laws in her
management of the federal budget.
Opposition lawmakers, who made clear early
on the only solution was getting her out of
office, argued that the maneuvers masked
yawning deficits from high spending and
ultimately exacerbated the recession in a
nation that had long enjoyed darling status
among emerging economies.
Nonsense, Rousseff countered time and again,
proclaiming her innocence up to the end.
Previous presidents used similar accounting
techniques, she noted, saying the push to
remove her was a bloodless coup d’état by
elites fuming over the populist polices of her
Workers’ Party the last 13 years.
The opposition needed 54 of the 81 senators
to vote in favor for her to be removed. They
got many more, winning in a landslide of sorts,
61-20.
“Today is the day that 61 men, many of them
charged and corrupt, threw 54 million Brazilian
votes in the garbage,” Rousseff tweeted
minutes after the decision.
Rousseff won re-election in 2014, garnering
more than 54 million votes.
In the background of the entire fight was a
wide-ranging investigation into billions of
dollars in kickbacks at state oil company
Petrobras. The two-year probe has led to the
jailing of dozens of top businessmen and
politicians from across the political spectrum,
and threatens many of the same lawmakers
who voted to remove Rousseff.
Rousseff argued that many opponents just
wanted her out of the way so they could save
their own skins by tampering with the
investigation, which Rousseff had refused to
do.
Many lawmakers and Brazilians nationwide,
meanwhile, blamed Rousseff for the graft even
though she has never been personally
implicated. They argued that she had to know,
as many of the alleged bribes happened while
her party was in power.
Rousseff’s removal creates many questions
that are not easily answered. Michel Temer,
her vice president who became her nemesis,
will serve out the remainder of her term
through 2018. But Brazilians have already
gotten a taste of Temer’s leadership, and they
are clearly unimpressed.
In May, Temer took over as interim president
after the Senate impeached and suspended
Rousseff. The 75-year-old career politician
named a Cabinet of all-white men, a decision
roundly criticized in a nation that is more than
50 percent nonwhite. Three of his ministers
were forced to resign within weeks of taking
their jobs because of corruption allegations,
which also follow Temer and threaten his hold
on power.
When Temer announced the opening of the
Olympics on Aug. 5, he was so vociferously
booed that he remained out of sight for the
remainder of the games.
Rousseff’s allies have vowed to appeal to the
country’s highest court. While previous
petitions to the court have failed to stop the
impeachment process, at the very least legal
wrangling will keep the issue front and center.
The decision also leaves many question marks
over the economy, expected to decline for a
second straight year. Temer has promised to
pull the country of 200 million people from its
recession by tackling reforms that have long
been taboo, such as slimming public pensions.
But he has not been able to accomplish much
the last 3 months as interim president, and it
remains to be seen whether Congress will be
willing to work with him.
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