Brazil proceeding toward impeachment of its president, Dilma Rousseff, matters to Americans. ADVERTISING Brazil proceeding toward impeachment of its president, Dilma Rousseff, matters to Americans. Brazil is the largest in area and population of U.S. neighbors to the south. U.S.
Brazil proceeding toward impeachment of its president, Dilma Rousseff, matters to Americans.
Brazil is the largest in area and population of U.S. neighbors to the south. U.S. two-way trade with Brazil was $60 billion in 2015. Brazil is scheduled to host the Summer Olympics in August. Brazil is also the center of the global struggle against the viral disease Zika, of which 358 cases have so far been found in the United States. There is also the continuing U.S. interest in stability in Brazil, given its overall importance.
Perhaps understandably, a high percentage of Brazilians have lost faith in Rousseff as president, in spite of having elected her twice, most recently in 2014 with a 52 percent victory margin. Her popularity rating is now in the single digits. The Brazilian Constitution provides for impeachment on the basis of crimes committed by the president. That’s where the current proceedings against Rousseff start to get shaky.
What she is supposed to have done is, basically, fancy budget accounting. She is accused of her government’s having moved around money from state-owned banks to cover up a budget deficit in an election year. By that means her Workers’ Party, in power for 12 years with a mixed record in governance, hoped to make the deficit not look as bad as it probably was. An enterprising approach to budgeting and moving money around within a government is a hallmark of regimes around the world, not excluding Washington’s.
As of now, the lower house of Brazil’s legislature voted 367-137 Sunday to impeach Rousseff. The matter now goes to the 81-member Senate, the upper house, which is scheduled tentatively to try her May 11. It isn’t clear what will happen then, except that her party and the opposition are itching to get rid of her, at no matter what cost to Brazil and other stakeholders in efficiency and tranquility in the country.
Given the Olympics, the Zika threat, the flimsiness of the charges and the crookedness of some of the people bringing the charges against her, there could be considerable advantage in postponing pursuit of the impeachment process until the fall.
— Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
