Brazil in crisis as impeachment fight gains momentum

As demonstrators on both sides massed noisily in the streets, the president's supporters denounced the vote as an attack on Brazil’s democracy just three decades after it emerged from a military dictatorship.

BRASILIA // The fight to oust Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff intensified on Monday after lawmakers authorised impeachment proceedings against her, deepening the country’s political crisis.

Enemies of the 68-year-old leftist leader said they would rush to the senate to launch an impeachment trial, after lower house lawmakers voted overwhelmingly on Sunday against her.

As demonstrators on both sides massed noisily in the streets, Ms Rousseff’s supporters denounced the vote as an attack on Brazil’s democracy just three decades after it emerged from a military dictatorship.

"Impeachment!" screamed the front-page headline of the Folha de Sao Paulo on Monday.

"Close to the end," said another leading paper, O Globo, adding: "Dilma Rousseff yesterday started to say goodbye to the presidency of Brazil."

In a 10-hour vote on Sunday, 367 of the 513 deputies in the lower house of congress backed impeachment – well over the two thirds majority needed to move the case forward.

Cheering and confetti burst from opposition ranks at the 342nd vote, countered by jeering from Rousseff allies. It was a snapshot of the divisive mood consuming Brazil just four months before Rio de Janeiro hosts the Olympics.

“It was a coup against democracy,” said Ms Rousseff’s attorney general, Jose Eduardo Cardozo.

She is accused of illegally manipulating budget figures but her supporters say there is no evidence and the impeachment drive amounts to a “coup”.

The case now passes to the upper house which is expected to vote in May on whether to open an impeachment trial.

Eduardo Cunha, the lower house speaker who engineered the successful impeachment vote, said Ms Rousseff’s days as president were numbered.

“Now Brazil needs to climb out of the bottom of the well and we have to resolve the situation as quickly as possible,” he said. “The senate should move rapidly.”

Outside congress, where tens of thousands of people were watching the vote on giant screens, the split was echoed on a mass scale – with opposition supporters partying and Rousseff loyalists in despair.

“I am happy, happy, happy. I spent a year demonstrating in hope that Dilma would be brought down,” said retiree Maristela de Melo, 63.

But Mariana Santos, 23, burst into tears, saying the vote was “a disgrace for our country”.

Several thousand police stood by and the rival camps were separated by a long metal wall. Thousands also rallied in Rio and Sao Paulo.

If, as many expect, the senate goes on to impeach the president, vice president Michel Temer – who abandoned Ms Rousseff to become a key opponent – will assume power until elections in 2018.

Monday’s newspapers printed pictures of him smiling as he watched the vote. But the celebrations could be short lived, analysts say.

Mr Temer would inherit a country wallowing in its deepest recession in decades and a dysfunctional political scene where Ms Rousseff’s Workers’ Party have vowed revenge.

“It will not be easy” for Mr Temer, said Andre Cesar, an independent political analyst. “It will be a nightmare.”

* Agence France-Presse