BRASILIA: An impeachment process against Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff appears to be back on track after the acting speaker of the lower house revoked his surprise decision to suspend a crucial vote.
Rousseff, who is accused of illegally juggling government accounts, maintained the appearance of business as usual, her official agenda featuring routine meetings in Brasilia with officials and a women’s group.
But Brazil’s first female president looks increasingly likely to be forced to step aside when the Senate votes Wednesday on whether to open an impeachment trial, triggering her automatic six-month suspension. The result of what’s expected to be a marathon voting session may not be final until Thursday.
If she is pushed out, her vice president-turned-enemy Michel Temer will take over.
Adding to the instability shaking Latin America’s most populous country and biggest economy, the leaders of the Senate and the lower house spent Monday in open conflict on whether the vote should go ahead at all.
Late Monday, the interim speaker of the lower house, Waldir Maranhao, backed down and reversed an earlier attempt to order the Senate to halt proceedings and return Rousseff’s case to the lower chamber.
That eased what was looking like an institutional crisis, with possibly the Supreme Court being needed to come in as a referee.
However, there was no patching over the divisions left in Brazil by the trauma of what Rousseff is daily denouncing as a coup d’etat.
Lawmaker Jose Guimaraes, from Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party, said that despite almost certain defeat in the initial Senate vote, the impeachment trial itself would be an all-out fight.
“We will have 180 days in the Senate, talking with every one of them, to get them to change their minds,” he told journalists, and warning that “our main fight today will be in the streets.”
Police are responding to heightened tensions by building a huge metal barricade outside Congress in the capital to separate rival groups of protesters during the Senate vote. A separation corridor 80 meters (yards) wide and more than a kilometer (half-mile) long will also be enforced.
A square where major government institutions are located will be declared a “national security zone” and made off-limits to the public, Brasilia security authorities announced.
Rousseff, who is accused of illegally juggling government accounts, maintained the appearance of business as usual, her official agenda featuring routine meetings in Brasilia with officials and a women’s group.
But Brazil’s first female president looks increasingly likely to be forced to step aside when the Senate votes Wednesday on whether to open an impeachment trial, triggering her automatic six-month suspension. The result of what’s expected to be a marathon voting session may not be final until Thursday.
If she is pushed out, her vice president-turned-enemy Michel Temer will take over.
Adding to the instability shaking Latin America’s most populous country and biggest economy, the leaders of the Senate and the lower house spent Monday in open conflict on whether the vote should go ahead at all.
Late Monday, the interim speaker of the lower house, Waldir Maranhao, backed down and reversed an earlier attempt to order the Senate to halt proceedings and return Rousseff’s case to the lower chamber.
That eased what was looking like an institutional crisis, with possibly the Supreme Court being needed to come in as a referee.
However, there was no patching over the divisions left in Brazil by the trauma of what Rousseff is daily denouncing as a coup d’etat.
Lawmaker Jose Guimaraes, from Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party, said that despite almost certain defeat in the initial Senate vote, the impeachment trial itself would be an all-out fight.
“We will have 180 days in the Senate, talking with every one of them, to get them to change their minds,” he told journalists, and warning that “our main fight today will be in the streets.”
Police are responding to heightened tensions by building a huge metal barricade outside Congress in the capital to separate rival groups of protesters during the Senate vote. A separation corridor 80 meters (yards) wide and more than a kilometer (half-mile) long will also be enforced.
A square where major government institutions are located will be declared a “national security zone” and made off-limits to the public, Brasilia security authorities announced.
