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Brazil Congress debates impeachment, government brands it a 'violent act'
Jurist Miguel Reale Junior speaks during a session to review the request for Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment at the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia, Brazil, April 15, 2016. PHOTO BY REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino
By Maria Carolina Marcello
15/04/2016
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's attorney general warned Congress on Friday that impeaching President Dilma Rousseff would mark an unprecedented break with democracy as legislators opened a three-day debate in the lower house on whether to recommend she be tried by the Senate.
In acrimonious exchanges on the floor of Congress, pro-impeachment lawmakers chanted "Dilma Out" at the start of a debate set to culminate with a vote on Sunday that Rousseff is widely expected to lose.
The government lost a last-ditch appeal on Thursday before the Supreme Court to halt the impeachment process. Rousseff is accused of manipulating budget accounts in 2014 to secure her re-election. She has strongly rejected the accusation, branding the impeachment process 'a coup'.
After several allied parties abandoned Rousseff's coalition in recent weeks, the opposition is expected to gain the two-thirds of votes in the 513-seat lower house to send the process to the Senate.
Attorney General José Eduardo Cardozo, taking the lectern to address the house in Rousseff's defense, called the process a "violent act with no parallel against democracy".
"History will never forgive those who broke with democracy," Cardozo said, as ruling lawmakers shouted: "There won't be a coup."
If Rousseff is ousted, it would end the 13-year rule of her leftist Workers' Party, which has lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty and is overwhelmingly supported by the poor.
One of the authors of the impeachment filing, former justice minister Miguel Reale Jr., opened the debate by saying the process to oust Rousseff reflected the will of the people.
Polls show that roughly two-thirds of Brazilians support impeachment.
"She was extremely irresponsible and knocked out the country," Reale Jr. said.
Rousseff, struggling with Brazil's worst economic crisis in decades and a spiraling corruption scandal, has seen support on the streets and from within her governing coalition steadily erode. More than a million protesters called for her impeachment in protests last month.
If her impeachment is approved by the lower house, the Senate must then vote on whether to go ahead with putting Rousseff on trial for breaking budget laws.
If it agrees to do so, in a vote expected on May 11, Rousseff would automatically be suspended and replaced by Vice President Michel Temer, pending a trial that could last six months.
(Additional reporting by Silvio Cascione; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by W Simon)
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