Brazil’s President on the Brink of Impeachment

Today, Brazil’s lower house of Congress has been voting whether the current president, Dilma Rousseff, will have to move forward in the impeachment process against her. The claims made against her are that she had manipulated government accounts for political gains.

In Brazil, the government needs to meet the specific budget surplus objective established by Congress. Dilma Rousseff is said to have approved of certain accounting techniques in which public banks loan to the treasury causing a fake budget surplus. This made the government’s economic status look better than it actually was, misleading investors along with the general public.

In order to successfully impeach Rousseff, the first step is to get a two-thirds majority vote from the lower house of Congress, which is 342 votes out of the 513 members. As of now, 300 votes out of the 500 have been cast with 224 voting to impeach Rousseff.

It is interesting to see the major transformation in Rousseff’s popularity, as three years ago she had an 80% approval rating according to one poll which is a stark contrast with the recent 11% of Brazilians who say her performance as president has been “good or excellent” this February.

Brazil is going through its worst recession in over three decades with 10.7% inflation, 9% unemployment, and its currency loosing a third of its value compared the the US dollar. Whether Dilma Rousseff had interfered with government accounts or not, Brazil’s previous rapid economic growth has slowed and is continuing to do so. With the recent scandals that Brazilian politics and business have had, a suspicion of corruption is constantly looming in Brazilian affairs. Unfortunately, this may only worsen Brazil’s economic state as mistrust of business practices can lower international business relations.

Aleah Fedorciw says:

April 18, 2016 at 2:15 pm

Hi Natalie, thanks for your post! It is also interesting to take into account the fact Brazil will be hosting the Summer Olympics. Between this recession, they also have been forced to spend extra money preparing for this popular event, screened world wide. In an article by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, the author illustrates the contrast between when the country was awarded the world games and now, between the hope and now the problems that the country is facing.

The games and recession present a choice: spend money on the country or how the rest of the world sees the country through a television screen.

http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/01/14/463030768/amid-recession-brazil-struggles-with-the-huge-costs-of-the-olympics

Julia Rivara says:

April 22, 2016 at 12:05 pm

Hey Natalie! This is such an interesting topic as her approval did plummet so quickly, as well as Aleah pointed out, the Olympics are going to be there this summer. I feel like there is beginning to be a trend with the Olympics and developing countries. I understand wanting to support developing states by drawing attention to their success through the global games that are the Olympics. But as in Russia, it is causing spending and expenses which the countries may not be able to support yet. In addition, Brazil has much need in many rural areas, in which citizens struggle to feed their babies and a phenomenon of “unnatural selection” happens. This is where mothers have to determine whether to continue feeding their babies, from lack of resources to afford food or knowledge that they will be malnourished in the future. In a country where this happens, it is difficult to justify the spending that is happening on the Olympics by the president. She has a lot of questions to answer, and if she does not do it soon, she probably will find herself impeached.