The Brazilian right-wing push to oust President Dilma Rousseff under false pretenses continues this Monday when those in favor of the impeachment process are scheduled to present arguments against the head of state.
The Senate is expected to vote on May 11, which may remove her from power and put in her place power-hungry Vice President Michel Temer.
According to the impeachment process agenda, the Lower House of Congress will listen to arguments by the State Auditor’s prosecutor Julio Marcelo de Oliveira, and professor of Law Jose Mauricio Conti, who are both in favor of impeachment.
The Senatorial Commission in charge of the procedure will also debate Communist Party lawmaker Vanessa Grazziotin’s petition to “suspend the impeachment process until Congress audits the presidential 2015 accounts.”
Grazziotin has argued that the “procedure against Dilma Rousseff violates legislation because the accusation was presented in October and it refers to the alleged non-compliance of the annual fiscal goal at a time when the deadline for presenting a financial report had not yet expired.”
According to an article published this Monday by The Financial Times, Rousseff’s “real crime” has nothing to do with any corruption scandal nor even with tampering with economic figures to disguise an economic crisis that would be her fault, but that Brazil is going through tough financial times, as are most countries around the world, mainly due to the historic fall in international oil prices.
Financial Times’ article suggests that the impeachment process against Rousseff, which has been condemned by many international organizations, including UNASUR, is completely illegal mainly because a democratically-elected government can not be overthrown due to economic issues brought on by international circumstances. In this case, those financial woes are linked directly to the United States and their allies, who have manipulated the price of oil in order to undermine the various rival countries, such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Iran and Russia, among others.
Last week, Rousseff’s defense team presented their arguments clarifying why the procedure is illegal.
The government’s main attorney Jose Eduardo Cardozo argued that, “even if the political trial against the president adhered to the constitution, it would result in a traumatic process, and more so, when it lacks all legal substance.”
Cardozo also said that “in order to prove that a crime has been committed, such as the one they are trying to pin on Rousseff, there needs to have been an act of ill-intent practiced by the president and not just the abstract political perception that one has been carried out.”
The lawyer concluded that if an “impeachment process without the legal conditions is approved it will become an instrument purely of the opposition that could be utilized at all levels and would convert Brazil into a country whose stability will be under permanent threat.”
On Sunday, marking International Workers’ Day, Rousseff said that a coup against her presidency would also put an end to the gains of all workers in a country where democracy is also being threatened.
Dilma Rousseff also took the chance to say she has never taken any money from the state — nor has the opposition presented any evidence of it nor much less proof — and that she has not been accused of corruption because again there is no evidence of it, and that in spite of all this the right-wing opposition is attempting to put her on trial.
Hence, Brazil is facing what international analyst have called a “soft coup,” that is likely to be approved in a Snate where the opposition has control, and so, without a crime having been committed, Rousseff, who was elected by over 50 million voters and who still enjoys a 90 percent of acceptance among Brazilians, is facing an illegal procedure.