Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff branded her vice president a traitor Tuesday, saying that he was a conspirator in a coup that aimed to use impeachment proceedings to bring down a popularly elected government.If there were any doubts about my denunciation that a coup is underway, there can't be now. The coup plotters have a leader and a deputy leader, Rousseff said in a blistering attack in Brasilia.
A Supreme Court judge ordered Brazil's Congress on Tuesday to start impeachment proceedings against Vice President Michel Temer, deepening a political crisis and uncertainty over leadership of Latin America's largest country. Justice Marco Aurelio Mello told the lower house to convene an impeachment committee to consider putting Temer on trial on charges he helped manipulate budget accounting as part of President Dilma Rousseff's administration.
Attorney General Jose Eduardo Cardozo told the congressional impeachment committee Monday that Rousseff had done nothing wrong and to remove her would be tantamount to a putsch.“As such, impeaching her would be a coup, a violation of the constitution, an affront to the rule of law, without any need to resort to bayonets,” Cardozo told the 65-member committee.
Politicians from seven parties in Brazil were named as clients of a Panama-based firm at the center of a massive data leak over possible tax evasion, O Estado de S.Paulo said on Monday.
President Dilma Rousseff's main coalition partner, the fractious Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PDMB), re-elected a key ally of hers as its leader in the lower house of Congress last week, enhancing her chances of blocking impeachment.
Brazilian Congress gave on Tuesday a harsh welcome to President Dilma Rousseff at its yearly inaugural session, booing her and threatening new difficulties added to the turbulent relations that prevail between the executive and legislative branches.
President Dilma Rousseff’s opponents in the fractious Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) are losing hope that they can impeach the leader and replace her with their man, Vice-President Michel Temer.
With her job on the line, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is spending January developing an economic plan which she hopes will restore faith in her leadership and weaken looming impeachment proceedings against her.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said on Tuesday that her opponents' bid to impeach her has no legal basis since there are no charges against her. At the opening of a metro station in the northeastern city of Salvador, Rousseff said a country cannot resort to impeachment just because it does not like its president, and said Brazil should focus on restoring economic growth and creating jobs.
An estimated 42% of Brazilian Lower House lawmakers (513) are prepared to support the impeachment of president Dilma Rousseff, which is equivalent to 215 votes. But the impeachment motion requires at least 342 votes, two thirds of the total number, which means supporters are still 127 votes short. These numbers belong to a Congress members survey from Datafolha, which was taken between December 7 and 18.