Rousseff now faces Senate vote
Rousseff now faces Senate vote
The fight to oust Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff speeded up on Monday after legislators authorised impeachment proceedings against her, deepening the country’s political crisis.
Opponents of the 68-year-old leftist leader said they would rush to the Senate to launch an impeachment trial, after Lower House legislators voted overwhelmingly on Sunday against her.
As demonstrators on both sides massed noisily in the streets, Ms Rousseff’s supporters denounced the vote as an attack on Brazil’s democracy just three decades after it emerged from a military dictatorship.
“Impeachment!” screamed the front-page headline of the Folha de Sao Paulo on Monday.
“Close to the end,” said another leading paper, O Globo, adding: “Dilma Rousseff yesterday started to say goodbye to the presidency of Brazil.”
In a 10-hour vote on Sunday, 367 of the 513 deputies in the Lower House of Congress backed impeachment — well over the two-thirds majority needed to move the case forward.
Cheering and confetti burst from Opposition ranks at the 342nd vote, countered by jeering from Ms Rousseff allies — a snapshot of the divisive mood consuming Brazil just four months before Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympics.
“It was a coup against democracy,” said Ms Rousseff’s attorney general, Jose Eduardo Cardozo.
He said Ms Rousseff would make her first public reaction on Monday.
She is accused of illegally manipulating budget figures but her supporters say there is no evidence and the impeachment drive amounts to a “coup”.
The case now passes to the Upper House, which is expected to vote in May on whether to open an impeachment trial.
Eduardo Cunha, the Lower House Speaker who engineered the successful impeachment vote, said Ms Rousseff’s days as President were numbered.
“Now Brazil needs to climb out of the bottom of the well and we have to resolve the situation as quickly as possible,” he said. “The Senate should move rapidly.”
There was expected to be a euphoric reaction on Monday from the financial markets. They have been betting heavily on Ms Rousseff’s exit and the advent of a more business-friendly government to kickstart Brazil’s economy.
Outside Congress, where tens of thousands of people were watching the vote on giant screens, the split was echoed on a mass scale — with Opposition supporters partying and Ms Rousseff loyalists in despair.
“I am happy, happy, happy. I spent a year demonstrating in hope that Dilma would be brought down,” said retiree Maristela de Melo, 63.
But Mariana Santos, 23, burst into tears, saying the vote was “a disgrace for our country”.
Several thousand police personnel stood by and the rival camps were separated by a long metal wall.
Thousands also rallied in Rio and Sao Paulo. If, as many expect, the Senate goes on to impeach the leftist President, vice-president Michel Temer — who abandoned Ms Rousseff to become a key opponent — will assume power.
Mr Temer would inherit a country wallowing in its deepest recession in decades and a dysfunctional political scene where Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ Party vows revenge.
