Overview of the Brazilian National Congress' Lower House, where the admissibility of the impeachment request of President Dilma Rousseff will be voted in Brasilia on April 17, 2016.EVARISTO SA/AFP / Getty Images
Members of Brazil's lower house of Congress are assembling now in preparation for a vote on the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff, while tens of thousand of protesters gather on the esplande outside.
Ms. Rousseff faces impeachment for allegedly fudging state accounting to cover a budget shortfall.
Outside the house, protesters on the pro-impeachemnt side are bedecked in green and yellow, the anti side in the red of Ms. Rousseff's Workers' Party. Police have erected a long steel wall to separate the two sides on the esplanade. A despairing graffiti artist sprayed the wall with the words "Look at what we've come to."
The impeachment sides needs 342 votes in favour in order to send the impeachment question to the Senate. If a simple majority of 81 Senators vote in favour, she will be suspended from office for 180 days while the upper chamber holds a trial.
At that point, her vice-president, Michel Temer, becomes interim president and would be formally installed if the impeachment passes. Most analysts say the Senate is unlikely to contradict the lower house on this question, although the speed of recent political events in Brazil makes it difficult to make predictions of any kind.
Brazilian media are reporting that Ms. Rousseff and her political aides (including former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva), and the opponents angling to oust her, were trading promises and favours late into the night in a bid to muster the votes needed. In an extra edition of the official government gazette released Saturday night, Ms. Rousseff appointed dozens of people to senior positions in 18 ministries.
The pro-impeachment side has a narrow lead in most counts, but there were reports of defections from either side late into the night and it is clear that the vote will go down to the wire. A handul of the myriad small parties among the 25 represented in the house will likely be critical in determining the outcome.
Ms. Rousseff is accused of using funds borrowed from state banks to mask a gaping budget hole ahead of the last election which, her critics say, violates a fiscal responsibility law. She acknowledeges there was some juggling of the ledgers but says points out that many previous governments have done the same thing, and says there no "crime of responsibility", which is required for a president to be impeached.
The anti-impeachment crowd are loyal to the Workers' Party – if not the unpopular Ms. Rousseff herself – because they say the creative accounting was used to maintain social programs that have helped more 30 million people out of poverty in the past 13 years. They fear those programs will be cut under a more right-leaning Temer government; he has pledged to maintain them.
The actual charges against Ms. Rousseff , and their validity, have become to some extent irrelevant in this drama.The two-thirds of Brazilians who say they want to see her impeached blame her for disastrous economic policy that helped push the country into its deepest recession in nearly 100 years, with unemployment and inflation both above 10 per cent. They are also enraged by the ongoing revelations from the giant graft scandal known as Lava Jato, or Car Wash, for its police code name.
While Ms. Rousseff has not personally been accused of corruption, dozens of senior figures in her party (and most others) have been indicted or are under investigation. More than half of the Congress members who will vote on her impeachment have been charged or named in corruption investigations. Two days ago, Lava Jato prosecutors released new plea bargain testimony in which an informer says Eduardo Cunha, speaker of the lower house and a main force behind the impeachment effort, received U.S.$16-million in bribes, in addition to the $5-million for which he is already facing charges.
Mr. Temer, the man poised to become de facto president, was largely unknown to the general public until recently. But is a veteran politician from the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, who in recent days has displayed a Machiavellian streak as he angles to take over. He says he plans a government of national unity with a pro-market financial adjustment that will boost the economy. But 58 per cent of Brazilians say he should also be impeached – he was vice president when Ms. Rousseff committed her alleged crime – and say they want neither of the two as president. There is an impeachment case open against Mr. Temer, and he was named by a Lava Jato informer as profiting from an illegal ethanol scheme at a state fuel company, an allegation that is under investigation.
This is one of the largest crowds to gather here in the capital since 2003, for a celebration marking the first inauguration of Mr. da Silva, the start of a bright period of racing economic growth and increased social inclusion in Brazil.