Hundreds rally in Brazilian streets to protest against new president

Hundreds of supporters of former President Dilma Rousseff took to the streets of Sao Paulo on Tuesday (August 9) to protest in defense of Dilma Rousseff, who is facing impeachment, and against the incumbent Brazilian President Michel Temer.

Brazil’s Senate voted early on Wednesday to indict President Rousseff on charges of breaking budget laws and put her on trial in an impeachment process that has stalled Brazilian politics since January.

With the peaceful but noisy protest, demonstrators called for Temer to be removed, saying Rousseff was innocent of the charges and attacking the present government.

“To apply pressure and keep the Senate alert to the fact that we will continue denouncing that it was not a crime of responsibility and that the goal of this present government is to attack labour rights, social rights etc,” said one man.

“In three months the Temer government already demonstrated that actually what was done in this country was a blow to the working people and democracy that took the presidency, a president elected with 54 million votes, and that is why we are on the streets today,” said another.

But with the eyes of the world on the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, senators in the capital Brasilia voted 59-21 against the suspended leftist leader in a raucous, 20-hour session presided over by Chief Justice Ricardo Lewandowski.

A conviction would definitively remove Rousseff from office, ending 13 years of leftist rule by her Workers Party, and confirm that interim President Michel Temer will serve out the rest of her term through 2018.

Rousseff’s opponents needed only a simple majority in the 81-seat Senate to put her on trial for manipulating government accounts and spending without congressional approval, which they say helped her win re-election in 2014.

A verdict is expected at the end of the month and will need the votes of two-thirds of the Senate to convict Rousseff, five votes less than her opponents mustered on Wednesday.

Wednesday’s vote showed the movement to oust Rousseff has gained strength in the Senate, which had voted 55-22 in May to take up the impeachment proceedings initiated in the lower house in December. It also looked like game over for Rousseff who lost crucial ground instead of winning over more senators.

This will strengthen Temer’s hand as he strives to establish his legitimacy and stabilize Brazil politically.

The uncertainty has hampered his efforts to plug a fiscal crisis inherited from Rousseff, who is blamed for driving the economy into what could be its worst recession since the 1930s.

Rousseff has denied any wrongdoing and denounced her impeachment as a right-wing conspiracy that has used an accounting technicality as a pretext to illegally remove a government that improved the lot of Brazil’s poorer classes.

Her supporters argue that she is being ousted by politicians, who are in many cases being investigated for receiving kickbacks in the graft scandal at state-led oil company Petrobras.

Corruption allegations forced the resignation of three of Temer’s cabinet members after and he could also be implicated. In plea bargaining testimony published by local media over the weekend, jailed construction magnate Marcelo Odebrecht reportedly claimed Temer had received illegal campaign funding.