A majority of Brazil's Senate
indicated on Thursday it will vote to put President Dilma Rousseff on trial for
breaking budget laws, signaling the end of 13 years of rule by the country's
leftist Workers Party.
In a marathon session of speeches,
41 of the 81 senators in Latin America's largest nation had indicated by the
early hours of Thursday morning that they would vote to try Rousseff, a move
that would suspend Brazil's first woman president.
The final vote, expected around
dawn, would make Vice President Michel Temer acting president during her trial,
which can last for up to six months.
Outside Congress, where a metal
fence was erected to keep apart rival protests, about 6,000 backers of
impeachment had earlier chanted "Out with Dilma" while police used
pepper spray to disperse gangs of Rousseff supporters, who hurled flares back.
One person was arrested for inciting violence.
Rousseff prepared for defeat by
planning her exit from the presidential palace. Aides said she will dismiss her
ministers on Thursday morning and tell them not to help a transition to a Temer
government because she considers her impeachment illegal.
Temer plans to swear in new
ministers on Thursday afternoon, Senator Romero Juca, head of his Brazilian
Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), told reporters.
Rousseff, who has been in office
since 2011, has seen her popularity crushed by Brazil's worst recession since
the 1930s and a two-year probe into a vast kickback scheme at state-run oil
company Petrobras (PETR4.SA).
The prospect of business-friendly
Temer taking power has driven Brazilian financial markets sharply higher this
year, on hopes he could cut a massive fiscal deficit, restore investor
confidence and return the economy to growth.
The political crisis has deepened
Brazil's recession and comes at a time when Brazil hoped to be shining on the
world stage as it prepares to host the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in
August.
Opposition senators blamed
Rousseff for running into the ground an economy now considered the worst
performing among major developing nations, pursuing what they called populist
policies that led to high inflation, recession and unemployment.
"Today we are trying to overcome
this situation by removing an irresponsible government. We have no
alternative," said Senator Blairo Maggi, one of Brazil's biggest soy
farmers, who is slated to become agriculture minister in a Temer cabinet.
SOLID MAJORITY
The Supreme Court rebuffed a
last-ditch bid by Rousseff to halt the Senate vote with an injunction. Justice
Teori Zavascki rejected as "legally implausible" the government's
argument that impeachment was flawed because it was begun out of revenge by the
former speaker of the lower house.
In a momentous session that many
Brazilians followed live on television, each senator was given the chance to
speak. A final vote could take place as late as 5:00 a.m. (0800 GMT) on
Thursday.
Brasilia-based consultancy ARKO
Advice projected that the upper chamber would vote 57-21 to try Rousseff, with
three abstentions or absences.
That would indicate Rousseff's
opponents may already have the two-thirds of the vote needed to convict her at
the end of the trial and remove her definitively from office.
If that happened, Temer would then
fulfil the remainder of her mandate until elections in 2018.
Rousseff, 68, was chairwoman of
Petrobras when much of the graft occurred, but she has not been accused of
corruption.
She stands charged with
manipulating government accounts to disguise the size of Brazil's fiscal
deficit to allow her to boost public spending during her 2014 re-election
campaign, a practice also employed by previous presidents.
The president's plan to dismiss
all her cabinet if and when the Senate suspends her will force Temer to hit the
ground running, since he was counting on a gradual transition to a new cabinet.
Two Rousseff aides said, however,
that the dismissal of her cabinet would exclude Central Bank Governor Alexandre
Tombini, and the current sports minister, who is scrambling to prepare for the
Rio 2016 Olympic Games in August.
'TIME FOR HER TO GO'
Opinion polls show an overwhelming
majority of Brazilians want to see Rousseff impeached. But the surveys also
indicate scant popular support for the 75-year-old Temer.
"I voted for Dilma, I believe
in her as a leader, but I also think she has done such a bad job that it is
time for her to go," said Leticia Britto, a 23-year-old business student
from Sao Paulo, visiting Brasilia. "The best way forward would be to call
for new elections."
Leaning toward a liberal economic
policy, Temer has picked former central bank chief Henrique Meirelles to be
finance minister and Itau Unibanco's chief economist Ilan Goldfajn as head of
the central bank.
"Temer may enjoy a honeymoon
with markets for some weeks, maybe months, but when investors come to realize
that the fiscal results will not improve fast enough, then we could see some
disappointment later this year," said Bruno Lavieri, an economist with
consultancy 4E, in Sao Paulo.
Rousseff has denied committing any
crime that warrants impeachment charges. A former member of a Marxist guerrilla
group who was tortured during Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, she has
called her impeachment a coup and vowed to fight the process until the last
minute.
"I will not resign, that
never crossed my mind," Rousseff said in a speech on Tuesday, to cheers
from supporters.
Rousseff's stance that democracy
is under attack has won sympathy among some of Brazil's leftist neighbors. The
U.S. government, meanwhile, said it hoped the country pulls through the crisis.
"Brazil is under some
scrutiny and under some pressure," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said
in Washington. "We continue to have confidence in the mature, durable
democratic institutions in Brazil to withstand the challenge."
The last time a Brazilian
president was suspended from office was in 1992, when Fernando Collor de Mello
was placed on trial for corruption. He resigned from office shortly before he
was found guilty by the Senate.
(Additional reporting by Alonso Soto,
Marcela Ayres, Brad Brooks and Silvio Cascione; Writing by Anthony Boadle and
Daniel Flynn; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
No comments:
Post a Comment