Reports from neighbouring Brazil indicate that the congressional opposition is gaining momentum in its bid to garner 342 votes in the Chamber of Deputies to approve the formal initiation of the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff on April 17.
Ms Rousseff is accused of illegal accounting procedures by using state-backed banks to mask budget deficits, in violation of the law of fiscal responsibility. This, incidentally, was something that both her predecessors, Lula da Silva (2003-2010) and Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003), appeared to have done, but to a considerably lesser extent.
The congressional vote is principally a political move and is only the first stage of the impeachment process which, if successful, would then be taken to the Senate, which acts as a sort of juror, before being referred to the Supreme Court, where legal arguments will carry more weight than politically-motivated ones.
Ms Rousseff is determined to fight the effort to remove her. Attorney General José Eduardo Cardozo, who has been charged with challenging the impeachment process in Congress, has gone so far as to label it “a coup” and has argued that there is no clearly defined crime to justify the process, which he claims is motivated by the politics of “retaliation” on the part of Eduardo Cunha, the Speaker of the Chamber. Mr Cunha, who initiated the proceedings, currently faces losing his job because of allegedly lying to Congress about secret Swiss bank accounts in his name.
But Ms Rousseff’s problems go beyond political grudges and legal technicalities. Brazil’s economy has been heading south for the past three years and is in recession; the inflation rate is 10% and rising. Massive corruption scandals have implicated some of the country’s most powerful politicians and business leaders. Ms Rousseff herself has been besmirched by cases of corruption during her pre-presidency chairmanship of state-run oil company Petrobras. Even discounting the impeachment process, she lacks the stature, leadership skills and charisma of her immediate predecessor and mentor, President Lula, to rally political public support for her efforts to adopt tough and necessary economic measures. And huge public demonstrations and the opinion polls reflect her total lack of credibility as president. But she is giving no indication of resigning.
Perhaps what is worse for Ms Rousseff and her Workers’ Party (PT) is the fact that Mr Lula himself currently faces charges of money laundering. When he demitted office in 2010, he did so with an approval rating of 87% and his protégée, Ms Rousseff, was seen as no more than a caretaker president, following his social and economic policies, and seemingly keeping the seat warm for his eventual bid to return to power in the 2018 election.
Now, however, Mr Lula is effectively under house arrest and a clumsy manoeuvre by Ms Rousseff to guarantee him immunity from prosecution by naming him to her cabinet as chief of staff was embarrassingly thwarted by a federal judge. The move was also regarded in some quarters as trying to hand power back to Mr Lula to manage the country’s various crises and was, ironically, dubbed an attempted “auto-coup” by some analysts.
Indeed, Mr Lula may be the bigger loser than Ms Rousseff. In a recent poll, 61% of respondents said that they would never vote for his re-election. The charismatic populist who lifted millions out of extreme poverty and who led successful bids for the FIFA World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games this year is increasingly being regarded as nothing more than another demagogue who took advantage of Brazil’s endemic corruption and questionable political deal-making to bequeath the country a tainted legacy of deepened political fractiousness, economic woes and continuing corruption, and whose real intent was to perpetuate the PT and his cronies in power.
Ultimately, though, it is the country itself that looks like being the biggest loser if the current political confrontation over impeachment continues, with a bitter and lengthy battle sure to polarise the country further and worsen the economic crisis – a chaotic situation that will also have dire implications for Brazil’s neighbours and the rest of the region.
