Brazil’s congressional impeachment committee has voted to send a vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff to the House of Representatives’ floor, placing her one step closer to being ousted. The leftist Rousseff’s Workers’ Party is planning rallies in her favor, with police anticipating the nation’s capital will attract thousands of protests for and against the president.
Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, is soon to face an impeachment vote in the nation’s House of Representatives, putting Brazil one step closer to her ouster. Possibly even more destabilizing for the country is one attorney’s efforts to force the legislature to impeach Vice President Michel Temer, as well, as Temer prepares to potentially become head of state.
The head of Brazil’s National Force for Public Security, Col. Adilson Moreira, has resigned, citing his disgust with the ongoing corruption scandal engulfing the administration of President Dilma Rousseff. The resignation leaves security operations for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro mostly unmanned until Rousseff names a replacement.
Amid cheers of “Dilma out!” and “Brazil forward!” the nation’s largest minority party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), has voted to leave the ruling government coalition, putting President Dilma Rousseff one step closer to impeachment.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff issued a defiant statement Tuesday, asserting that an investigation implicating her in a billion-dollar corruption scandal is an attempt at a coup d’etat and that she will “never resign” from her post, despite millions of Brazilians taking to the streets to demand she step down.
The International Olympic Commission issued a statement saying it was “closely monitoring” the increasingly unstable political situation in Brazil, but was “very confident” the nation would be able to competently host the Summer Olympics this August regardless of the outcome of weeks of protests demanding impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
On Sunday, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff praised the nearly four million Brazilians who took the streets to call for her impeachment for maintaining the peace.
Less than an hour after President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil swore her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, into a position as her new chief of staff, a federal court issued an injunction annulling the appointment, suggesting Rousseff’s decision may amount to a crime.
The judge presiding over a massive corruption probe into Brazil’s state-run oil corporation has released audio of wiretaps in which President Dilma Rousseff is heard telling her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, that she has a plan in place to grant him government immunity should prosecutors build a strong enough case to send him to jail on corruption charges.
Thousands of Brazilians returned to the streets Wednesday night after an intense weekend of protests to call for President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, following the appointment of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as her Chief of Staff. The appointment partially shields da Silva from prosecution for corruption allegations related to the billion-dollar Petrobras kickback scheme.
A Brazilian senator arrested after an investigation implicated him in one of the biggest corruption scandals of the nation’s history accused President Dilma Rousseff of sending one of her closest aids to offer to pay his legal fees if he agreed not to implicate her or other high-ranking officials in the case.
Brazil’s government is expected to grant former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a position as minister alongside President Dilma Rousseff, a move many suspect is intended to shield da Silva from facing money laundering charges in federal court.
An estimated total of 3.6 million people took to the streets of Brazil Sunday to demand President Dilma Rousseff resign or face impeachment in what is being called the largest peaceful protest in the nation’s history.
Brazilian federal law enforcement officials detained former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva for nearly four hours to interrogate him on a possible role in the billion-dollar corruption scandal plaguing Petrobras, the nation’s state-run oil corporation.
