Brazil's [Dilma] Rousseff going to U.N. over impeachment; cabinet in crisis

[Hamartia Antidote]

Brazil's Rousseff going to U.N. over impeachment; cabinet in crisis

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-politics-idUSKCN0XH20L

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff gestures during a news conference for foreign journalists at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil April 19, 2016.
Reuters/Ueslei Marcelino


Beleaguered Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will travel to New York in a bid to rally international support against her impeachment, leaving behind a Cabinet paralyzed by political crisis as another minister defected on Wednesday.

Rousseff aides said the leftist leader will attend a United Nations event on Friday in New York where she will denounce as illegal the attempt to impeach her, a process that could see her forced from office within weeks in a process she calls a "coup d'état without weapons."

Energy Minister Eduardo Braga said he was quitting her government following orders from his centrist PMDB party, Rousseff's main coalition partner until it abandoned her last month to back her ouster. Rousseff's impeachment would end 13 years of rule by the leftist Workers Party.

Nine ministers in Rousseff's 31-member cabinet have now resigned, leaving important portfolios without politically appointed heads, including the Tourism and Sports ministries only four months before Brazil hosts the Olympic Games. Rousseff may not even be president by the time the Games start.

Vice President Michel Temer, who would take over if Rousseff is impeached, met with close advisors in Sao Paulo to study plans for a new government that, aides said, would move quickly to restore economic confidence and growth.

The crisis has paralyzed Brazil's ability to revive the economy from its worst recession in decades in the midst of a massive corruption scandal involving state-run oil firm Petrobras (PETR4.SA).

Murilo Portugal, the head of Brazil's most powerful banking industry lobby, has emerged as a strong candidate to become finance minister if Temer takes power, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

Rousseff lost a crucial vote in the lower house of Congress on Sunday and now faces impeachment by the Senate on charges of breaking budget laws.

With the prospect of the Senate suspending her in three weeks, Rousseff canceled her trip to attend the signing of the Paris Agreement on climate change on Friday to focus on her political survival.

Two presidential aides said Rousseff would use her visit to New York to defend herself in interviews with international media.

"A RATHER UNUSUAL COUP"

Rousseff says the accounting manipulation her administration used, putting off the transfer of funds to state banks, was a practice employed by previous governments. Her opponents say it allowed her to unfairly expand public spending and boost her re-election campaign in 2014.

Her government's legal appeals for injunctions to stop the impeachment process have been rejected by the Supreme Court.

Rousseff on Tuesday said the impeachment process was started by lower chamber Speaker Eduardo Cunha, who is charged with corruption and money laundering, out of revenge for her government not shielding him from ethics committee hearings.

She accused Temer, leader of the PMDB party, of plotting against her. During her trip to New York, Temer will temporarily assume the presidency, an irony not lost on his aides.

"This is a rather unusual coup," said Temer's spokesman Marcio de Freitas. "She is going to the U.N. to denounce a coup but handing over power during her trip to the man she says is trying to overthrow her."

The longest serving justice on Brazil's Supreme Court weighed in on the debate on Wednesday, telling reporters the motion to impeach Rousseff was not a coup, despite her claim.

"This is totally mistaken. Congress and the Supreme Court have made it quite clear the impeachment process has complied with the Constitution up to now," Justice Celso de Mello said.

Her opponents have also traveled to the United States to defend the impeachment. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Aloysio Nunes, of the opposition PSDB party, was in Washington this week to explain to U.S. government officials why the process is constitutional.

Nunes met his counterpart, Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, on Tuesday and was due to meet with the State Department's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Tom Shannon, on Wednesday.

 

[third eye]

Beleaguered Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff will travel to New York in a bid to rally international support against her impeachment, leaving behind a Cabinet paralyzed by political crisis as another minister defected on Wednesday.

Politicians across the world have this problem - they dont accept when their ' best before' date is passed.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapo...eek-for-brazils-president-dilma/#67a34df1cbde

This Is The Last Week For Brazil's President Dilma
Brazil is just three days away from becoming a nation without a leader.

President Dilma Rousseff has proven that you get no brownie points for being a woman in Latin America’s biggest economy. The nation’s first female president was ousted April 16 by the lower house of congress for breaking fiscal responsibility laws and on May 11 a Senate committee will surely rule in favor of that vote. Their decision will force Dilma to step down to prepare for a trial in the Senate which could go on for months. In the interim, Dilma’s vice president Michel Temer takes the helm of the Brazilian Titanic. He will rearrange the deck chairs while the media keep playing their song. It won’t help them. Temer’s popularity is about as high as Dilma’s, with less than a 20% favorability rating.

The next 72 hours will be particularly dramatic. The ruling Workers’ Party is essentially a cornered wild animal. Dilma will do whatever she can to nullify the lower house vote.

For latecomers to the story, Brazil is now a tragicomedy of how oil giant Petrobras got swindled by the billions as an intrepid group of federal police caught dozens of crooked A-list politicians and businessmen in its dragnet. The story is so larger-than-life that Brazilian director Jose Padilha is making a serial about it and had no problems selling it immediately to Netflix.

In real life, Dilma is trying desperately to escape. She’s deep underwater and running out of breath. While her impeachment had nothing to do with the Petrobras scandal, the Supreme Court still has on the docket a case involving her alleged campaign financing using Petrobras cash.

She has one tiny glimmer of hope, though her supporters shouldn’t cling to it too tightly.

On May 5, the leader of the congressional movement to impeach Dilma was stripped of his powers. That’s Eduardo Cunha of the Democratic Movement Party, a former Dilma ally. Now a household name in Brazil, and one of the co-stars in the Brazilian crisis that has been world news all year, Cunha was removed his post as House Speaker by a unanimous vote in the Supreme Court last week. He is also temporarily banned from voting in congress. He will appeal, but his appeal is unlikely to succeed. As a man involved in the Petrobras scandal, accused of receiving over $5 million from lobby firms working on behalf of Petrobras contractors, Cunha is a ticking time bomb. But that is for another story. For now, his replacement Waldir Maranhao, is seen as Dilma’s first line of defense in having this entire process canceled.

Like roughly a third of Brazil’s congress, Maranhao is about as clean as a hog in a pig pen. He is from the Progressive Party, which is the former Workers’ Party ally that had the most politicians on an Attorney General’s list citing political figures involved in the Petrobras graft scheme.

Maranhao voted against impeachment and now wants the whole process nullified. Their argument is that Cunha was being investigated in the Petrobras case, was first to orchestrate the house impeachment process, and therefore his motives should void the whole process. Only, on April 14 the majority of 11 Supreme Court judges voted that the house vote was constitutional. Considering this is the highest court in the land, the vote will become next to impossible to overturn. The decision to impeach belongs to the legislative branch of Brazil’s government. The decision on its legality belongs to the judicial and the judicial said it was legal. Case closed.

Tears of joy? Michel Temer in foreground; Senate leader Renan Calheiros in the middle and opposition senator Aecio Neves of the Social Democrats share a laugh. All three want Dilma out. All three investigated for influence peddling and being bribe recipients from Brazilian businesses. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

Moreover, the Brazilian Accounting Court, known as TCU, had agreed with a house committee months before the impeachment vote that Dilma did indeed break fiscal responsibility laws. Cunha, pleased with himself, got his chance for showtime. The April 16 vote made Brazil’s congress look like a bad Latin America Sunday variety show, complete with confetti cannons, mosh pits and selfies.

On Saturday, one of Dilma’s colleagues in congress, Paulo Teixeira of the Workers’ Party in Sao Paulo, asked the Supreme Court to review the house vote once again now that Cunha has been forced out. This could, at best, delay the Wednesday vote. Brazil’s attorney general Jose Eduardo Cardozo promised to follow Teixeira’s move and will try to impede the Senate committee vote this week.

In other words, Brazilian lawyers are stalling. Although Supreme Court judges do not talk openly about impeachment, those who have spoken have indicated over the weekend that the Senate vote will go on. And so that means that on Wednesday, Michel Temer will be Brazil’s part-time president.

Not even Temer wants this job full-time.

Last week, Temer said that should the Supreme Court force new elections this October he would not run for President. He also said that he would not run in 2018, the next scheduled general election.

Cunha’s ouster is a sweet revenge for Dilma supporters. But unless he is arrested, or banned from politics forever, Brazil is a country where the humiliated and the infamous get their second chance. In 1991, Brazil’s first democratically elected president, Fernando Collor, was impeached on corruption charges. He is now part of the Brazilian senate.

 

[jammersat]

She looks like a fat michael jackson with her facelift surgery

 

[Star Wars]

For latecomers to the story, Brazil is now a tragicomedy of how oil giant Petrobras got swindled by the billions as an intrepid group of federal police caught dozens of crooked A-list politicians and businessmen in its dragnet. The story is so larger-than-life that Brazilian director Jose Padilha is making a serial about it and had no problems selling it immediately to Netflix.

In real life, Dilma is trying desperately to escape. She’s deep underwater and running out of breath. While her impeachment had nothing to do with the Petrobras scandal, the Supreme Court still has on the docket a case involving her alleged campaign financing using Petrobras cash.

There is a Sonia Gandhi in every country....

 

[jammersat]