Brazil committee to vote on Rousseff’s impeachment
A committee in Brazil’s Senate is due to vote shortly on whether to recommend removing the country’s suspended President Dilma Rousseff from office or having her reinstated as president.
The impeachment committee is widely expected to go against Rousseff in the Thursday vote, acting on an earlier report by the Senate that found Rousseff guilty of violating the constitution.
While the vote will have no legal effect, it will send a clear message to the Senate plenary on the suspended president. The full Senate is also expected to approve the report on Tuesday.
The Thursday vote will come on the eve of the opening of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, which are supposed to showcase the largest South American country’s growing economic power and political stability.
The Senate’s approval of the report, even by a slim majority, would mean that Rousseff’s impeachment trial will have to proceed and the final and decisive session on the fate of the suspended leader will then be scheduled for August 29, a week after the Olympics close in Rio de Janeiro.
The Senate needs at least a two-thirds majority in its final vote to have Rousseff removed. Under that scenario, Michel Temer, Rousseff’s vice president-turned-opponent, who has taken over as acting president, will stay in office until the end of 2018.
However, if Rousseff is acquitted at the end of the August trial, she will be allowed to serve out her own term.
Rousseff was suspended on May 12, when the Senate voted to put her on trial for allegedly breaking budget laws. She has denied any wrongdoing, and has vowed to call early elections if she survives the impeachment trial and is reinstated as president.
A team of independent auditors released a 224-page report in June, concluding that there was no evidence of Rousseff having participated in the budget manipulation.
She is also under fire over a graft scandal at state oil company Petrobras, where she was the manager before taking office as president in 2010.
Rousseff has denied the allegation and repeatedly asserted that she has fallen victim to a plot by the extreme political right in the country.
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