Dilma Rousseff has been thrown to the wolves. The leftist President of Brazil has been put on trial in an unprecedented vote to impeach the country’s first woman head of state with a 55-22 majority in the Senate. The former Marxist guerrilla — who led the left-wing Workers Party government for five years and whose welfare spending is thought to have helped millions escape poverty — stands accused of accounting fraud. Although she claims she only did what was not unprecedented in shifting government funds to plug holes in the Budget — a common enough window-dressing exercise — it is also clear Brazil, Latin America’s largest economy, has been hit by its worst inflation in decades.
Dilma’s fate — she has had to step down after Wednesday’s vote — lies in a trial by the Senate. Given certain predisposition to condemn her, it appears the traditional ruling class has asserted its control over the country in a neat palace coup in which the person on trial has not been charged with a crime like corruption. If the reaction to Dilma’s rule is some form of misogyny, as the world may well suspect, it appears she may have fallen once and for all.
The poet President Michel Temer, a known centrist, has quite a task on hand. The stirring woman leader who rubbed shoulders prominently with the high and mighty in Brics will be missed in powerful world forums. The story, however, is that of the Brazilian economy and the host of the Olympics has now to cope with the political fallout even as the Olympic Games are set to begin.
