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Brazil’s Senate Votes to Move Ahead With Dilma Rousseff’s Trial Brazil’s Senate Votes to Move Ahead With Dilma Rousseff’s Trial
(about 9 hours later)
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s Senate voted in the early hours of Wednesday to begin the last phase in the impeachment trial of Dilma Rousseff, the president who was suspended in May, setting the stage for her final removal from office.RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s Senate voted in the early hours of Wednesday to begin the last phase in the impeachment trial of Dilma Rousseff, the president who was suspended in May, setting the stage for her final removal from office.
The trial in the Senate, which will be overseen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is expected to take place this month. After hours of debate in the capital, Brasília, senators voted 59 to 21 to indict her on charges of budgetary manipulation, formally making her a defendant. After hours of debate in the capital, Brasília, senators voted 59 to 21 on Wednesday to indict Ms. Rousseff on charges of budgetary manipulation, formally making her a defendant. The trial in the Senate, which will be overseen by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is expected to take place this month.
Although only a simple majority was needed in Wednesday’s vote, the number of senators that went against Ms. Rousseff exceeded the two-thirds that would be needed to oust her permanently when a final vote is held after the trial ends. “It marks the final phase,” said Ivar Hartmann, a law professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas in Rio de Janeiro.
She also lost the crucial support of a senator from the governing Brazilian Democratic Movement Party who had previously voted against the impeachment process. Although only a simple majority was needed in Wednesday’s vote, the number of senators who went against Ms. Rousseff exceeded the two-thirds needed to oust her permanently when a final vote is held after the trial, a sign that she faces long odds of surviving.
After an all-night debate in May, the Senate voted to temporarily remove Ms. Rousseff from office and to begin impeachment proceedings, sidelining a deeply unpopular leader whose sagging political fortunes came to embody widespread public anger over systemic corruption and a battered economy. Brazil’s political upheaval resulted in some awkwardness in the first week of the Olympic Games, which are being held in Rio de Janeiro. The interim president, Michel Temer, who took over in May after the Senate’s vote to suspend Ms. Rousseff, is highly unpopular and was booed by many fans when he attended the opening ceremony last week.
On Wednesday, the Senate voted to formally indict Ms. Rousseff. She has been accused of manipulating the federal budget to conceal mounting economic problems. The impeachment proceedings, which have consumed most of the year, became politically tenable after Ms. Rousseff’s popularity plummeted. Her sagging political fortunes came to embody widespread public anger over systemic corruption and a battered economy, largely a result of policies she enacted during her first term.
The Senate’s move comes during the Summer Olympics, which are being held in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s political upheaval resulted in some awkwardness in the first week of the Games. The interim president, Michel Temer, who took over in May after the Senate’s vote to suspend Ms. Rousseff, is highly unpopular and was booed by many fans when he attended the opening ceremony last week. Yet the process has also drawn sharp criticism, including of members of Congress, who detractors say neglected the country’s serious economic problems for over nine months in order to push impeachment forward. For example, they ignored numerous fiscal austerity measures Ms. Rousseff sent them during her second term, which started in January 2015 after a narrow re-election victory.
The proceedings have also deepened polarization in the country: Brazilians protesting against impeachment were removed from some sporting events during the initial days of the Olympics.
The vote on Wednesday was the latest in a complex impeachment process with many steps. First, the lower house voted in April to give the Senate the authority to open an investigation. On May 6, a Senate committee voted to recommend one. The full Senate’s May 12 vote, which temporarily suspended Ms. Rousseff, was effectively a decision to start a prosecution against her.
In Brazil, the president is suspended at that point “so that the investigation can continue unimpeded by her,” said Daniel Vargas, a law professor at Fundação Getulio Vargas.
Wednesday’s vote by the full Senate means that the “accusations against her were accepted,” including a request for conviction, said Ronaldo Porto Macedo Jr., a law professor at the University of São Paulo and other institutions.
Another difference in the latest vote was that the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Ricardo Lewandowski, presided over it. He could have thrown out the charges, saying that they lacked minimum grounds to continue, according to Professor Macedo.
Next comes the final trial, during which the Senate will invert its role from prosecutor to jury. Ms. Rousseff has been accused of manipulating the federal budget to conceal mounting economic problems, although, unlike many of the political figures who have orchestrated her ouster, she has not been accused of illicit personal enrichment.
“Formally speaking, Dilma becomes a defendant as of today,” Professor Vargas said.
Impeachment supporters point to the following of this process, together with legal grounds for impeachment and Supreme Court oversight, as evidence that Ms. Rousseff is being treated fairly. Yet she and her supporters contend that the proceedings are a ruse to disguise what she has long argued is a coup against her, a highly charged term in Latin America.
Neither side, though, is unblemished. What is clear is that impeachment has been a highly political process and, effectively, a power struggle, with valid doubts about its legitimacy and motives.
Many who led the impeachment effort, including members of Congress and Mr. Temer, are themselves accused of corruption. That includes Renan Calheiros, the president of the Senate, who is facing numerous inquiries. There is also evidence that several of them plotted to oust Ms. Rousseff in order to derail the continuing corruption investigation, although there is no proof that they succeeded.
Mr. Calheiros, a highly malleable politician who was until recently an ally of Ms. Rousseff but is now a key supporter of Mr. Temer, has also been pushing measures seen as weakening the corruption investigation, raising concerns among federal prosecutors.
The lead prosecutor in the inquiry, Deltan Dallagnol said in a recent interview, “We don’t have any doubt that the objective of these proposals is to silence the investigation.”
All of this has made many people question whether Ms. Rousseff is getting a fair look by members of Congress. The skeptics include the head of the Organization of American States, who criticized the process in April.
The Brazilian diplomat Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, a former member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said of impeachment, “The legal grounds are completely unconvincing.”
If Ms. Rousseff is impeached, “this will be tragic,” he said. “It will be tragic for Brazil, but it will also be tragic for our continent.”
Still, Ms. Rousseff’s moves since being suspended do not seem to be doing her any favors. She has recently quarreled with members of her own party, with whom she has a tense relationship.
In Wednesday’s vote, she also lost the crucial support of a senator from the governing Brazilian Democratic Movement Party who had previously voted against the impeachment process after an all-night debate in May.