The Brazilian Senate voted on the 12th of May to suspend left-wing President Dilma Rousseff from office for 180 days and issued an impeachment motion against her over allegations of manipulating government accounts to cover budget shortfalls before her re-election in 2014, and refraining from disclosing these financial facts to the Parliament. Fifty-five senators out of 81 voted to open an impeachment trial against President Rousseff.
Vice-president Michel Temer was immediately assigned to lead the country as acting president until the completion of Rousseff’s trial where he directly formed an interim cabinet. Power in Brazil has thus shifted from the left-wing Workers’ Party, which was in power since 2003 with the election of President Lula da Silva, to the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) that represents the most prominent rival of Rousseff and her party.
The suspension of Rousseff is considered as a defeat for the Workers’ Party in one of the fiercest battles between the leftist party and right-wing powers. Sacking the President of Brazil raises a series of questions: is this an implementation of the law and democratic mechanisms whereby the legislative and judicial state institutions hold the executive power accountable or is something beyond that being woven behind the legal and constitutional curtain?
A legal facade of a political conflict
Since March, suspended President Rousseff, who took office in January 2011 before the start of her second presidential mandate in 2015, joined her supporters in accusing both the Parliament and Senate of mounting a coup. All the actions undertaken against her seemed legal and in-line with the Constitution until the 23rd of May when the newspaper Folha de San Paulo published the transcript of a phone conversation between Romero Jucá, president of PMDB and Planning Minister in Temer’s interim cabinet, and Sérgio Machado, the former president of state oil company, Transpetro. Both Jucá and Machado are suspected of being implicated in the scandalous corruption of state oil firm Petrobras, also known as the Lava Jato or Operation Car Wash. In the conversation between the two officials that took place in March 2016 and lasted for about 75 minutes, Jucá mentioned that the only way out from the Operation Car Wash crisis was a political exit. “We have to change the government to be able to stop this bleeding,” he said. Machado concurs: “The easiest solution would be to put Temer in power.”
Jucá has allegedly spoken to Supreme Court justices, who told him that this “nonsense” would never stop as long as Rousseff remained in power. It is also said that he received guarantees from military commanders that they could prevent disturbances from radical and left-wing groups. Jucá admitted that the conversation had taken place, but he said his words were taken out of context arguing that he was not referring to Operation Car Wash but the disastrous economic situation in the country.
In light of these developments, it seems that the parliament’s suspension of President Rousseff is nothing but a legal facade covering a political conflict between the leftist Workers’ Party, which has been in power for the last 13 years, and the right-wing movement. This conflict became multifaceted in the turmoil of the Petrobras corruption case. The conflict is driven at three levels:
- The Street: During the past two years, Brazil has witnessed waves of demonstrations against suspended President Dilma Rousseff protest economic recession in the country. In 2014, and since the outset of investigations into Operation Car Wash, protesters shouted slogans demanding Rousseff and Lula to be held accountable for corruption accusations. Although investigators did not issue any charges against Rousseff, sacking the President was the main demand of anti-corruption protests.
- The Judiciary: The Brazilian Federal Court revealed a resounding scandal in 2014 when it announced that contractors in Brazil bribed senior Petrobras officials and other public offices to get overbilled contracts with the state oil company. The accusations targeted high-level politicians in the cabinet, parliament and both ruling and opposition parties. Amidst this scandal, the rising star was the young Brazilian federal court judge Sergio Moro, who became a symbol of the demonstrations against Rousseff’s cabinet. The Federal Court judge managed to incarcerate and arrest politicians and former executives in the biggest Brazilian companies including President of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha. The Supreme Court decided to arrest Cunha upon the prosecutor’s request for charges of obstructing investigations linked to corruption cases against him and members of the Chamber. Cunha was already accused of receiving bribes and money laundering in Operation Car Wash.
- The Parliament: The conflict then moved to both chambers of the parliament. After the congressional committee announced that the Brazilian government manipulated accounts to hide a growing deficit, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Cunha, (before his arrest) launched a campaign demanding the impeachment of Rousseff. With the escalation of protests in the streets and intensification of investigations in Operation Car Wash, the vice-president, and a member of the PMDB, Michel Temer, seized the opportunity to withdraw from the coalition government last March. He then started a new coalition between right-wing opposition parties and the PMDB. This coalition was effective when its parliamentary members voted for Rousseff’s impeachment and appointing Temer as acting president at least for a six-month term. Temer’s mandate would last until the end of Rousseff’s term in 2018 if she eventually gets condemned.
In this regard, a survey conducted recently shows that 62 per cent of Brazilians prefer holding early elections to replace both Rousseff and Temer, while only 8 per cent are in favor of having Temer in office until the end of Rousseff’s term.
Regional Transformation
The latest developments witnessed in Brazil are an indicator of the current transformation in Latin America. Neighboring countries have witnessed scenarios similar to those in Brazil. In June 2012, the sweeping majority of Paraguay’s Congress voted to impeach democratically elected President Fernando Lugo over his failing to perform his duty to preserve social consensus by mishandling the clashes between farmers and the police in 2012, in which at least 17 policemen and farmers died.
Latin American states refused the impeachment of Presidents which they considered as an anti-democratic process. Two days after the suspension of Paraguay’s President, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner described the impeachment as a “coup” and a breach of democracy and withdrew Argentina’s ambassador from Paraguay. As Brazil recalled its ambassador for discussions, it asserted that conserving democracy is a pivotal element for regional integration. In the same context, the Mercosur Trade Bloc suspended Paraguay’s membership over the impeachment of President Lugo.
The regional stance supporting the legitimacy of elected presidents was noted during the protests in Venezuela lead by the opposition demanding the impeachment of leftist president Maduro. Foreign ministers of Brazil, Argentina, and Chile flew all the way to Caracas to hold dialogue sessions between the opposition and ruling regime. These efforts eventually lead to relatively calming the situation down and preserving democracy. Both Chile and Ecuador have expressed their concerns about Rousseff’s impeachment. The leftist government in Venezuela was the strongest opponent to suspension in Brazil, calling it a “coup.” Both Venezuela and Salvador withdrew their ambassadors from Brazil.
Argentina’s position was the most remarkable. The newly sworn-in Brazilian Foreign Minister Jose Serra made his first diplomatic visit to Buenos Aires on the 23rd of May amidst demonstrations in Argentina revoking him and the new President Temer. During his meeting with the newly-elected right-wing Argentinian President Macri, he discussed a potential intervention to solve the economic crisis in Venezuela. This initiative fueled doubts about the intentions of the right-wing governments of the two largest states in Latin America regarding Maduro’s government. Both officials agreed on bilateral trade outside the framework of Mercosur, which indicates the emergence of a new tendency against the regional coalitions and blocks that prospered under the leftist tide in the continent during the past decade.
Post-Rousseff Impeachment
Brazil is highly polarized between the supporters and opponents of President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment. Rousseff’s supporters consider that, although the suspension was undertaken with constitutional means, it entails a conspiracy between State symbols (the parliament, judiciary, army) and with the right-wing coalition, against the Workers’ Party.
Rousseff’s supporters believe that the main goal of the president’s impeachment is to offer her as a scapegoat in the Car Wash Scandal to ease tension in the street and close the case that might bring down many stakeholders. The suspension is also seen as an opportunity to move forward with capitalist economic decisions that have been halted due to the presence of the Workers’ Party in power for the past 13 years. In fact, the interim government is confirming these doubts by adopting new policies aiming at selling governmental companies and assets. On the other hand, opponents of Rousseff and the Workers’ Party believe that Brazil is currently witnessing a war against corruption and faulty economic policies that lead the country to an aggravated economic recession since 2014.
In conclusion, it is worth saying that the arrival of the left-wing to power in many Latin American countries during the past decades is linked to the popularity of this movement amongst the poor population. The strength of the poor population is embedded in its large size and voting power in elections. However, in reality, the interests of state institutions in these countries have been strongly tied to the interests of the rich class. Many events in the continent have proven that when the popularity of the leftist government regresses amongst citizens, there is an opportunity for state institutions to intervene and suspend those governments that act against their interests. These phenomena were known in the seventies of the past century as “bloody military coups” and are emerging again today as what some would call “constitutional coups.”
