Senate Brazil in turmoil (coup?), weeks before Olympics

Many Brazilians are calling today's suspension from office (through impeachment) of President Dilma Rousseff (who has served as leader since 2011) a "coup."

Some say she was removed for political/ideological reasons because she's a leftist. She's a Marxist economist, former guerrilla, captured and tortured by the military dictatorship in power during her youth. But she has held office for years and her predecessor was of the same socialist party.

Some even say it's for sexist reasons (she's the first female President there), or racist/xenophobic reasons (she's the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant). She also received controversy for trying to criminalize homophobia.



The political opposition (now in control) say she was removed because she didn't follow accounting rules on the budget, calling it corruption. Rousseff admits she made mistakes, but remains adamant she committed no crime. She is heading to trial, and suspended for the duration of the trial, with the votes probably there to remove her even if she's found innocent.

Brazil has also been hit by recession and large deficit, but considered a rising power and is one of the world's largest democracies... and the Olympics will begin there in a few weeks in the middle of all of this.


I'm not that informed about what's going on there, just hearing things from friends who live in Brazil, who all seem to be siding with Dilma Rousseff, and some of my own research. Does anyone have a better understanding of what's going on there? And what exactly she did that's so horrible she's being impeached for it? Does it really seem like a political coup, even if it's a "legal" one?

 

Are you only now just aware of the Rousseff impeachment vote?

 

I'd been hearing about it for a while, but it's not covered in the news here, and my Brazilian friends said it would never actually materialize like it did today with the suspension and upcoming trial. Hadn't seen anyone here talking about it either.

 

The majority of the entire parliament is implicated in corruption scandals. Many of them in exactly the same one. The London Review of Books had a good treatment of the situation.

 

Do you have a link? All the news articles I've been reading have been very vague about "budget rules" and "accounting practices" without going into any detail about the actual substance.

 

Zika virus too! Go Brazil!

Seriously though they've got a great women's volleyball team.

 

I don't buy newspapers, I think even the NYT online had limits per month when I last tried to regularly visit it in college. I'd see an article about this story every once in a while from the Associated Press on my Yahoo homepage about the proceedings, but like I said, my Brazilian friends when I asked them didn't think anything would actually come of it because they said the charges against her were baseless and all political, so I didn't follow it closely (and my focus has been on the US elections lately). Didn't see anything about it on NBC, MSNBC, etc. But anyways, this thread isn't about me.

Did I get the facts right in my intro post? Can you add any insight from what you've read in the NYT?

 

Well like I said, that's what my friends in Brazil are calling it, and when I went to the Huffington Post I saw them call it that too. One of the reasons I made the thread is to talk about it and learn the facts. That's why I put a Question Mark after coup, because that's what's people are calling it, but it seems to me like they're doing it legally (not that there can't be a legal coup, but the word has baggage). So, do you think it was a coup? Also, what's the Petrobas scandal?

 

Please find here.

 

So the Dilma's scandal is that she used money, from her business connections with a state-owned company, to help cover the deficit and lied about where she got the money?

But the people involved with an actual bribery scandal, involving that same company, aren't prosecuted but are instead given power while hers is stripped?


If I'm understanding it right, that's pretty outrageous. She shouldn't have done that, but she was trying to help her country in a "Robin Hood" kind of way, taking from an oil business (though it doesn't seem to be theft?) to help the government's shortfall.

But the people personally profiting from that oil business in their own dealings, and helping them profit, are instead rewarded with power.

The lesson here seems to be it's ok to use your connections with Petrobras for personal profit and for the profit of Petrobras (and might even be given the Presidency for it, without an election), but if you dare use it to help the country then you're removed from office.



EDIT: I'll read the link tomorrow J-w, thanks

 

Ghost do you ever subscribe to podcasts?

If so, BBC World Service has 2-3 30min world news briefings daily. Free to subscribe.

 

I wonder if the DPRK will invade Brazil.

 

Maybe the High Sparrow is the now-impeached Dilma Rouseff.

 

Let The Games Begin!! (Just don't get bitten by any mosquitos, especially if you ever want to get pregnant.... and stay away from the public waterways.....

 

This is not Brazil's fault, but the rest of the worlds.

 

A coup? Not a coup. They went through the legislative process.

 

This is going really well, Ghost.

 

i love you

 

its a product of the torture she underwent. like how john mccain cant raise his arms above chest level because apparently torture does that to you somehow

they tortured her so hard that now her hair only grows high and tight

 

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