Next Sunday Brazilians will be going to the polls to elect mayors and councilors in 5.570 cities and towns across the country in what is the first test of the mood of voters since the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff last month.
Brazilian Senator Gleisi Hoffmann and her husband, Paulo Bernardo Silva, who both served in the ousted government of former President Dilma Rousseff, were indicted on Tuesday by the Supreme Court on corruption and money laundering charges in the Petrobras graft investigation.
Brazilian president Michel Temer addressing business leaders and foreign policy experts in New York earlier this week revealed another twist to the recent political events in the country which led to the impeachment and removal of his elected predecessor Dilma Rousseff.
Former President Dilma Rousseff called the prosecution of her predecessor on corruption charges another attack on Brazil's democracy, speaking just weeks after the Senate removed her from office in an impeachment trial.
Two weeks after the removal of Dilma Rousseff as Brazil's president, the lower house of Congress on Monday expelled the lawmaker who engineered her impeachment for lying about secret bank accounts in Switzerland. The once powerful former speaker Eduardo Cunha, who has been charged with corruption by the Supreme Court, was banned from politics for eight years and faces arrest now he has lost his congressional prerogatives.
Pope Francis called for people to pray to the Aparecida Virgin to protect all of Brazil and all of the Brazilian people in this very sad moment, in reference to the removal of Dilma Rousseff as president and her replacement by vice-president and interim president Michel Temer, which occurred last week.
Venezuela on Wednesday withdrew its ambassador from Brazil and froze ties in response to president Dilma Rousseff's removal from office.
Brazil's suspended president, Dilma Rousseff, took the stand on Monday at her impeachment trial in the Senate, delivering a last-ditch defense to prevent her final removal from office. “Don’t expect from me the obliging silence of cowards,” Ms. Rousseff, 68, said in a withering attack on her opponents at the start of her testimony.
The Brazilian Senate will open the impeachment trial of suspended President Dilma Rousseff this Thursday and hear witnesses for and against the populist leader who is expected to be removed from office next week on charges of breaking budget laws.
With the Rio Olympics over, Brazil’s attention returns to its long-running political drama as the country’s Senate starts the final phase of suspended President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment trial, a proceeding widely expected to permanently remove her from power.