Foreign Affairs
IMPEACHED: Brazilian President Could Get Canned By Congress
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Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was impeached by the lower house of the Brazilian Congress Sunday for a wide-ranging corruption scandal that has consumed the country’s politics for months.
The Brazilian lower house voted 367 to 137 in favor of impeachment — a two-thirds majority was needed for the motion to pass.
Brazil’s Senate must now vote on the impeachment motion. Only a simple majority is needed for the Senate to impeach Rousseff.
If the Senate impeaches the president, she “will have to step down for 180 days to defend herself in an impeachment trial,” according to CNN.
Rousseff was impeached due to allegations of corruption at the highest levels of government and business stemming from bribery in the country’s state oil company Petrobras. In their impeachment vote, the Brazilian lower house specifically cited allegations of budget manipulation by Rousseff ahead of her 2014 reelection.
The corruption scandal had already claimed the head of the country’s largest construction firm Odebrecht, and there is also an ongoing investigation into the activities of former President Luiz Inacio “Lula” Da Silva.
Left-wing Rousseff, who is the leader of the Brazilian Workers’ Party, was expected to have a banner year in 2016 with the upcoming Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics. The international sporting competition was meant to signal the country’s rise as a global economic power.
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