President Dilma Suspended as Brazilian Senate Votes for Impeachment

Brazilian Senate has suspended Dilma Rouseff from the Presidency by a vote of 55 to 22, and will now begin formal impeachment proceedings there. The Presidency, till the final verdict in the Senate, will now be held by the Vice President Michel Temer of the PMDB party. He will continue, if the Senate votes with a two-thirds majority against President Dilma. The impeachment proceedings have to be completed within the next 180 days.

The travesty of this will not be lost on the people; there is no corruption case against Dilma, but there are a number of them against Temer. Not only does he represent the neo-liberal sections of the ruling elite, for example, planning to induct bankers from Goldman Sachs into his cabinet, and is also neck deep in corruption. He was also fully party to Dilma's Budget, and if she is impeached for manipulating Budget figures, it is difficult to see why he should not be considered equally guilty.

There is little doubt that Dilma and PT – the Workers Party -- had lost a lot of popularity. A part of it was due to their own making, a part of it due to the collapse of the primary commodity market including oil, the major export of Brazil. While corruption scandals involving Petrobras have been laid at the door of PT, the ruling party to which Dilma belongs, the fact is that the investigations have snared the main opposition parties even more than PT. President Dilma and the former President Lula, in spite of the campaign in the Brazilian media, have as yet had no charge levelled against them. The impeachment proceedings against Dilma are for manipulating the budget, what all governments routinely do, and Indian Finance Ministers take as a part of their prerogative.

Fully 60% of the Brazilian Congress and Senate have charges of corruption against them. The President of the Lower House the Congress, Eduardo Cunha who lead the charge against Dilma, has been found in possession of secret Swiss bank accounts after having lied about them earlier, and charged with taking tens pf millions of dollars in bribes. The Court has finally unseated him, but only after the Dilma vote in the lower house.

The left in Brazil lead by the PT have won the last 4 presidential elections. Having failed electorally, the right decided for a constitutional coup using their majority in the Congress, as the only way they could regain power. The impeachment charade is only to unseat PT, who they could not remove otherwise.

It will be increasingly clear to the Brazilian people that the mass movement against Dilma was not about corruption but about regaining power. In order to protect themselves, they will also have to sabotage the corruption proceedings, as their key figures all have corruption cases against them. The new dispensation is likely to also swing immediately to the right, Temer having already made his position clear on that. This will give the left an opportunity to shift the debate from Dilma and her policies to those who have seized power and who they are. And they are far more unpopular than Dilma. Dilma's support had dropped to a disastrous 10%, opening the way for Brazil's oligarchic media to mount its populist offensive. Temer starts with an approval level of only 2%! It is difficult to see how he and his crony crooks can survive a popular offensive.

What the right-wing in Brazil has done is to weaken the democratic institutions of the state in their foolhardy mission to get rid of Dilma. Short term, it may help, but in the long term, it will only strengthen the left and popular forces in Brazil.

Image Courtesy: thedawn-news.org