CIA-NSA Supported Brazilian Coup Back On, Rousseff Ousted Wednesday?
Host photo agency
03:33
11.05.2016(updated 10:23 11.05.2016) Get short URL
One day after the
Brazilian people breathed a sigh of relief after the lower house impeachment
vote was annulled, that decision was unheroically walked back, creating what
may become a gory constitutional crisis.
On Monday, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff saw
the effort to oust her in a legal coup suddenly all but called
off, when acting speaker of Brazil’s lower house Waldir Maranhão moved
to annul the April 17 impeachment vote, citing procedural improprieties.
But on Tuesday
the mercurial Brazilian impeachment circus stunned the world again when Maranhão
renounced his own move to annul the April 17 vote, increasing the
likelihood that Rousseff will face a 180-day suspension from office when
the country’s Senate votes on Wednesday, paving the way for the
unpopular conservative, Vice President Michel Temer, to assume the
presidency.
Brazilians fear that
Temer and his unelected Brazilian Democratic Movement Party will move quickly
to privatize the country’s natural resources and institute austerity
measures in Latin America’s most populous country.
The Brazilian Senate
Votes on Impeachment Wednesday
The Senate had
announced on Monday that, notwithstanding the move to annul the
lower house vote for impeachment, the body would still take up the
impeachment vote, arguing that authority transferred to the upper chamber
after the April 17 vote was certified by then-lower house leader
Eduardo Cunha. Cunha was suspended from office last Friday by the
Brazilian Supreme Court for corruption charges, and was replaced
by Maranhão.
Cunha, the primary
architect Rousseff impeachment, is viewed by Brazilians as the country’s
most corrupt politician, having been featured in the infamous Panama
Papers and linked to 23 separate Swiss shell accounts that he uses
to launder kickback money. It has been alleged that Cunha bribed his lower
house colleagues to vote in favor of impeachment.
Speaking
on Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear show on Monday,
Brazilian analyst Victor Fraga told Brian Becker that the decision
to annul the April 17 vote meant that Wednesday’s vote "would not
have any legal value because the first part of the impeachment process has
been invalidated." Yet it remained unclear whether Maranhão had legal
jurisdiction to annul the vote led by his predecessor.
Now,
following a decision to retract the annulment, another question
persists as to whether an annulment of a vote can be retracted if the
initial annulment had any effect in the first place.
Rousseff Takes the
Impeachment Battle to the Supreme Court
On Tuesday, Brazil’s
top lawyer, Attorney General Eduardo Cardozo, asked the Supreme Court
to annul impeachment proceedings, arguing that they were politically
motivated and had no legal basis.
The Supreme Court
seems to be the only authority standing between a coup and an
eruption by disenfranchised Brazilian voters. Local reports indicate that
Rousseff’s opponents have more than the 41 votes needed to initiate a
full impeachment trial, thereby suspending the leader for 180 days, and
they are confident they can gather a two-thirds vote, or 54 of the 81
senators, necessary to oust Rousseff and the Workers Party.
With the growing
prospect that the impeachment process will take a step forward on Wednesday,
Workers Party supporters took to the streets, blocking traffic in Sao
Paolo, burning tires, and calling for a national strike to resist the
coup.
The Supreme Court
may have grounds to step in and annul the impeachment
against Rousseff on the basis of corruption, the same procedural
irregularities that lower house leader Maranhão noted yesterday. The top court
can also annul the vote if they find such a decision cannot be retracted.
How the Coup Began
The precursor
to the impeachment proceedings against Rousseff was the “Car Wash”
corruption investigation into Brazil’s Workers Party, the state-owned oil
behemoth PetroBras, and construction companies that participated in a
kickback scheme. The dragnet investigation first roped in Workers Party
founder and former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Rousseff stepped
in to shield the popular Lula da Silva from imprisonment
by appointing him as her chief of staff.
The Car Wash
investigation revealed that Rousseff intentionally misrepresented economic data
during her reelection bid, shifting money between government accounts
to mask the fiction. Although not a criminal act, it is on these
grounds that Rousseff’s opponents sought impeachment. Brazilian analyst Fraga
told Radio Sputnik that "what she is accused of has been widely
practiced by all governors and presidents of Brazil."
The investigation
was the product of surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA)
of President Rousseff’s administration and of the state-owned oil
company PetroBras. In 2014, the US faced potent blowback from the
Brazilian government when the surveillance was discovered by Wikileaks.
The product of that surveillance was then given to a rural Brazilian
judge who began the investigation.
What Happens Next?
The vote
on Wednesday appears all but certain to result in the
Rousseff’s suspension, absent intervention by the country’s Supreme
Court. The process has been marred by NSA spooks, rampant corruption, and
procedural irregularities that are seen to anger the Brazilian people.
It is worth asking
whether Rousseff accepts the impeachment coup, or opposes it by declaring
a state of emergency. Fraga states, "the country is literally divided
in two, friendships and families have been divided with people literally
on each side. What hasn’t happened yet is social convulsion – there hasn’t
been violence in the streets."
Fraga said that the
Brazilian people worry that "if there is a real social convulsion there
may be a military coup which wouldn’t be in the interest of the
Brazilian people, but it would be in the interest of the
American establishment which has a history of overthrowing Latin American
governments."
Absent heroic
actions by the Brazilian Supreme Court, the people of Latin America’s
most populated country could soon have an unelected government appointed
by a kangaroo court, or installed by force, depending on how
rowdy they decide to get. All of this political drama contributes
to the overwhelming confusion of the Olympics, which arrives
in only 3 months.
No comments:
Post a Comment