Impeachment process against Brazil’s Rousseff annulled, new vote called

Attempts to impeach Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff have stalled as the acting speaker of lower house of the Congress annulled the impeachment process on Monday and called for a new vote.

The decision by Waldir Maranhao – who came into office last week – comes as the impeachment process was passed to the Senate for a vote, following last month’s decision in the lower house. The upper chamber was set to vote on Wednesday.

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Procedural irregularities were detected during the April vote that ended with the lower chamber accepting impeachment charges against Rousseff, Maranhao said, according to Reuters.

It still remains unclear whether his decision could be overridden by the Supreme Court, the Senate, or a majority of votes in the house.

The leftist Rousseff, who denies any wrongdoing, may face trial on a charge of breaking budget laws.

The Senate had been expected to vote in favor of putting Rousseff on trial. At that point, she would have been suspended from her office for a period of up to six months, with Vice President Michel Temer taking over in the interim.

Maranhao is an ally of Governor Flávio Dino, one of the main supporters of President Rousseff. He took over the office of speaker from Eduardo Cunha, who orchestrated the impeachment process against Rousseff. Cunha was suspended amid the investigation on charges of corruption, intimidation of lawmakers, obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

Rousseff insists that there are no legal grounds for the impeachment, adding that the procedure initiated against her has “all the characteristics of a coup,” which could have “serious consequences for the Brazilian political process.”

The motion alleges that President Rousseff manipulated the government’s accounts amid her re-election campaign in 2014.

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Dilma Rousseff loses impeachment vote in Brazil's lower house

Speaking to her supporters in Brasilia on Monday after the lower house’s vote was suspended, Rousseff called herself “a victim of a coup.”

“It's an absolute disregard of the Brazilian population, it's to undermine their capacity to comprehend, to talk that impeachment is not a coup because it's on the constitution. Well, it is on the constitution, but they forget to say that to have an impeachment, there needs to be a crime of responsibility. And there is no crime of responsibility,” Rousseff stressed.

A money laundering investigation, dubbed Operation Car Wash and involving the state-controlled oil-company Petrobras, has implicated a number of senior officials of Rousseff’ s Workers’ Party and their opponents as well.

Ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, close ally and mentor of Rousseff, has also been drawn into the scandal, which gave a setback to her approval ratings, which had already plummeted to around 10 percent.

Three men in Rouseff’s possible line of succession, Vice-President Michel Temer, ex-speaker of the lower house Eduardo Cunha and Renan Calheiros, head of the upper house of Congress, have all been implicated in the investigation.

On April 17, 367 members of the lower house out of 513 voted for impeachment proceedings to go ahead.

https://www.rt.com/news/342406-brazil-rousseff-impeachment-canceled/