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Dilma Rousseff Awaits Brazilian Senate’s Impeachment Vote Dilma Rousseff Awaits Brazilian Senate’s Impeachment Vote
(about 7 hours later)
BRASÍLIA — President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil broke from her routine on what may be her last day in office, trading her usual morning bike ride for a walk in the gardens around her residence among the rheas — the tall, flightless birds that endure on the country’s tropical savannas. BRASÍLIA — Even before the speeches were finished, the votes were cast and her fate had been sealed, a common conclusion had already settled in the halls of President Dilma Rousseff’s palace on Wednesday: The party’s over.
Aides to Ms. Rousseff, whose fate is expected to be decided on Wednesday by an impeachment vote in the Senate, described the halls of her palaces as a mixture of grim resignation with a dash of gallows humor. With a mixture of grim resignation and a dash of gallows humor, aides said that some of them had already stopped working; they were now too busy looking for new jobs. Others even seemed a little relieved; at least the long battle was almost over.
The party’s over, they said. As for Ms. Rousseff, who has publicly vowed to keep fighting the “coup mongers” engineering her ouster, her office issued only a cryptic description of her schedule: “Internal meetings.”
Some are already looking for new jobs. Others just seem to be relieved that the long battle is almost over. Just a short stroll from her palace, the Senate was debating whether to suspend Ms. Rousseff and place her on trial, the culmination of months of tirades, secret maneuvering and legal appeals in the campaign to impeach her.
The Senate is deciding whether to suspend Ms. Rousseff and place her on trial for borrowing money from state banks to plug budget holes, masking Brazil’s economic problems in an attempt to bolster her re-election prospects. “I’m convinced that there is more than enough proof of her crimes,” said Marta Suplicy, a senator from São Paulo who was Ms. Rousseff’s ally before defecting from her leftist Workers’ Party.
While Ms. Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, has largely stuck to her routine in recent days, consulting with cabinet ministers or meeting with supporters, her office issued a cryptic description of her schedule on Wednesday: “Internal meetings.” Even some of Ms. Rousseff’s supporters in the Senate expected her to lose the vote, which would oust the Workers’ Party from the presidency it has held for 13 years.
Images have already circulated depicting Ms. Rousseff’s offices cleared of personal photographs, giving rooms a spartan feel. Aides said they expected Ms. Rousseff, 68, to watch the Senate vote unfold on television. Lawmakers are expected to finish voting sometime Wednesday night. “There is no other path for us than opposition,” Humberto Costa, the Workers’ Party leader in the Senate, told reporters during the session on Wednesday. Still, he said it would be a “very firm opposition.”
If she is ousted by the Senate, the formal notification of her removal should arrive on Thursday morning. Reports recently emerged that Ms. Rousseff was planning to walk down the ramp in front of the president’s offices, the Palácio do Planalto, accompanied by supporters in a show of defiance. The Senate vote is a watershed in the power struggle consuming Brazil, a country that experienced a rare stretch of stability over the last two decades as it strengthened its economy and achieved greater prominence on the world stage.
But an aide to Ms. Rousseff said that the president was reconsidering her exit, weighing the possibility of discreetly leaving in a chauffeured car instead. She would then be driven to her residence, the futuristic Palácio da Alvorada, where she is allowed to stay during her 180-day trial. Now, those gains are unraveling. Brazil is facing its worst economic crisis in decades, huge corruption cases across the political spectrum and a bitter feud among its scandal-plagued leaders — just months before the world heads to Rio de Janeiro for the Summer Olympics.
During that time, her salary would be cut in half, to about $4,400 a month, though she would still have access to a large staff numbering in the dozens. The man seeking to replace her, Vice President Michel Temer, would take the helm of government while living in his official residence, the Palácio do Jaburu. Justifying the somber mood in Ms. Rousseff’s palace, one senator after another announced their plans on Wednesday to vote against her, signaling the end of the political dominance of her leftist Workers’ Party.
While some of Ms. Rousseff’s staff members have already refrained from working full-time — as they look for new jobs in a public bureaucracy that is about to turn hostile to her leftist Workers’ Party — the president has maintained a sense of resolve. Ms. Rousseff insists that the push for her ouster amounts to a coup. If she is suspended and put on trial, she will become the second of Brazil’s four elected presidents to be removed from office since democracy was re-established in the mid-1980s after a long dictatorship.
Speaking this week in Brasília before activists promoting women’s rights, Ms. Rousseff, who was an operative in an urban guerrilla group in her youth, addressed the crestfallen mood around her. She lost a vote last month in the lower house of Congress, which advanced the impeachment proceedings to the Senate. Powerful lawmakers fending off their own graft charges led the effort against her.
“Plainly said, this is the worst crisis in our history, with its combination of economic calamity, discredited politics and the violation of the lowest ethical standards,” Boris Fausto, a Brazilian historian, told reporters this month.
Unlike some of her adversaries in Congress, Ms. Rousseff is not suspected of stealing for personal enrichment. Instead, she faces accusations that she borrowed money from state banks to plug budget holes. Her opponents say she used this strategy to hide Brazil’s economic problems, in an attempt to improve her re-election prospects.
But even many who want Ms. Rousseff to be ousted are bracing for what comes next. Vice President Michel Temer, the former ally who is poised to take over the government if Ms. Rousseff is suspended, is an unpopular figure as well, with one recent poll finding that only 2 percent of Brazilians would vote for him.
He also faces his own legal problems. An electoral court ordered him this month to pay a fine for violating campaign financing limits. The ruling could make him ineligible to run for elected office for eight years, creating an unusual situation in which a politician barred from campaigning ends up running the country.
“Temer is what we’ve got,” Mr. Fausto said. “I hope he’ll be up to the difficult and often highly unpopular tasks ahead of him.”
Fixing the economy, which may require adopting unpopular austerity measures, is just one of the challenges facing Mr. Temer, 75, a lawyer and career politician who, until recently, was perhaps best known to many Brazilians for his 32-year-old wife, Marcela, a former beauty pageant contestant with his name tattooed on the nape of her neck.
Brazil is grappling with the Zika epidemic, one of its worst health crises in decades. Its oil industry is crashing as Petrobras, the national oil company, faces low energy prices and an enormous graft scandal. And there are doubts about the nation’s preparations for the Summer Olympics in August.
But the impasse between Ms. Rousseff and her rivals has kept the government in Brasília distracted from these problems, exposing the political establishment to withering scrutiny around the country.
While Ms. Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, has largely stuck to her routine in recent days, consulting with cabinet ministers and meeting with supporters, aides said they expected her to watch the Senate vote on television.
Images have already circulated of Ms. Rousseff’s offices cleared of personal photographs, giving rooms a spartan feel. In another departure from her daily regimen, she traded her usual morning bike ride for a walk on Wednesday in the gardens around her residence, among the rheas — the tall, flightless birds that endure on the country’s tropical savannas.
If she is ousted by the Senate, the formal notification of her removal should arrive on Thursday or Friday. Local news reports said that she would exit the palace alongside her mentor, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in a show of defiance. She would then be driven in a chauffeured car to her residence, the futuristic Palácio da Alvorada, where she is allowed to stay during her 180-day trial.
Ms. Rousseff, 68, contends that her predecessors enacted the same budgetary manipulation policies that she is accused of. Her rivals say that does not make her innocent.
Beyond that, an array of figures in her Workers’ Party are either in jail or under investigation on charges of graft, dealing a blow to the legitimacy of a party that came to power vowing to end such practices.
During a suspension, her salary would be cut in half, to about $4,400 a month, though she would still have access to a large staff, numbering in the dozens. The man seeking to replace her, Mr. Temer, would take the helm of government while living in his official residence, the Palácio do Jaburu.
Concerns are growing about the legitimacy of a government assembled by Mr. Temer. If Ms. Rousseff and the Workers’ Party shift into the opposition, they will most likely claim her ouster was illegal, and Mr. Temer’s top allies remain mired in corruption scandals of their own.
Several of his top advisers are under investigation, including Romero Jucá, a senator from Roraima State in the Amazon, and Geddel Vieira Lima, a former executive at one of Brazil’s largest public banks. Mr. Temer has insisted that those inquiries would not prevent him from naming the advisers to his cabinet.
The president has maintained a sense of resolve. Speaking in Brasília to activists promoting women’s rights this week, Ms. Rousseff, who was an operative in an urban guerrilla group in her youth, addressed the crestfallen mood around her.
Calling her adversaries “traitors,” she said, “I’m not tired of fighting.”Calling her adversaries “traitors,” she said, “I’m not tired of fighting.”