Impeachment proceedings opened against Brazil’s Rousseff

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Impeachment proceedings were opened Wednesday against Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff by the speaker of the lower house of Congress, a sworn enemy of the beleaguered leader.

A special commission in which all political parties are represented must now weigh the decision of speaker Eduardo Cunha, who himself is facing corruption charges before the Supreme Court, to open the proceedings against Brazil’s president based on accusations her government broke fiscal responsibility laws. Rousseff sharply disputes the accusations.

While impeachment is expected to get by the commission, most political analysts say it’s unlikely to get the two-thirds vote of the lower house that would remove her from office temporarily. But if it does pass, the case would then go to the Senate to decide whether she should be removed permanently.

“The chances of President Rousseff being impeached aren’t as big as politicians say now, despite this bold move by Cunha,” said Luciano Dias, a political consultant at the Brasilia-based Analise Politica firm. “They are not insignificant, but they are not huge. There needs to be more than two-thirds of more than 500 deputies voting against her, and that number is very hard to reach.”

Rousseff began her second term in office on Jan. 1 and has been hobbled by a political corruption scandal centered around a kickback scheme at state-run oil company Petrobras.

Rousseff herself faces no accusations of wrongdoing in the corruption scandal.

But Cunha, a member of the Brazilian Democratic Party which is the top partner in Rousseff’s ruling coalition, is accused of taking millions in bribes related to the scheme, and has not bothered to hide his fury for the investigation against him by the government’s attorney general.

For that reason, members of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party say that Cunha’s introduction of the impeachment proceedings is pure retribution.

Sen. Humberto Costa, a Workers’ Party leader in the Senate, said “Cunha has created the lowest-level of blackmail a nation can see.”

Since her narrow re-election, Rousseff has faced repeated calls for her to be impeached or step down, though with no direct link to the Petrobras scandal, her opponents’ calls have until now gone unheeded.

But Brazil’s federal audit court in October ruled that Rousseff broke the nation’s fiscal responsibility law in 2014 by using money from state-run banks to fill budget gaps and pay for government social spending.

There is sharp legal debate about whether Rousseff can face impeachment for an offense committed during her previous term – a matter that is widely expected to be taken up by the nation’s Supreme Court as this situation moves forward.

Rousseff’s woes could not come at a tougher time for Brazil, with its economy expected to contract by more than 3.5 percent this year and again be in recession next year.

That could be a wild card for Dilma as she fights for her political life.

“It is going to get worse for Rousseff because the economic crisis will get worse in the first quarter of 2016,” said David Fleischer, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Brasilia. “The pressure against her will be huge.”

“This decision could also stimulate Dilma’s party to tell her to resign, since the Worker’s Party might suffer a heavy defeat in next year’s mayoral elections because of her unpopularity,” he added.