There is an ongoing impeachment process from the Brazil Senate against President Dilma Rousseff. It was thrown into disarray on Monday, right after rejecting a surprise decision by the acting speaker of the lower house. Who also tried to void an agreement of a key vote just days before the president could be suspended from office.
Waldir Maranhão, the lower house’s acting speaker, called to halt the process. Maranhão also called for a new vote in the lower house. But along positive and negative shouts in the Senate, Speaker Renan Calheiros called the decision illegal.
Actually the Senate is scheduled to vote on Wednesday on whether to start an impeachment trial where the president of the Senate impeachment commission also said the vote would take place as scheduled.
Maranhão also said that lawmakers should not have announced their votes in advance. In addition, that they should not have been told how to vote by party leaders. He added that Rousseff’s defense should have been last to speak before voting began.
“For these reasons I annulled the session. . . and decided that a new session should take place,” Maranhão said.
He did not set a date yet, but about 70 percent of Brazilian deputies voted against Rousseff in last month’s session, so dozens of lawmakers would have to change their minds about her impeachment for a future vote to break her way.
If Dilma Rousseff loses, she will be suspended from office, pending a trial that could last six months. She faces allegations that her government violated fiscal rules.
What could happen in Brazil?
If Rousseff ultimately loses her looming impeachment battle over claims of illegal accounting, she will be the 18th elected Latin American president since 1985 forced to leave office by means other than the ballot box.
Dilma might also been the second Brazilian president that leave her charge this way since Fernando Collor de Mello, who resigned under threat of impeachment back in 1992.
Also, the military might stay in the barracks and presidential expulsion following the constitutional rules; it is tempting to see this as a good sign for democracy. After all, if the corrupt presidents are being impeached for misdeeds, doesn’t it show that checks and balances are working out?
Best example of this might be the recent events that were happening in Guatemala, where President Otto Pérez Molina was caught in the middle of a corruption scandal uncovered in 2015 by the International Commission against Impunity. Many political analysts applauded his stunning resignation where they praised his downfall as a sign of a “democratic spring” in Central America.
Source: The Globe and Mail