By Simon Gorbaty ‘19, Staff Writer

In August, billions of eyes around the world were fixed on the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Following the Olympics, however, stories regarding the country remained center stage in the news. The impeachment trial of president Dilma Rousseff had been underway since July. On August 31, the Senate voted 60-21 in favor of removing her from office. Her successor is 75-year-old Michel Temer, a lawyer who served as Rousseff’s vice president.

Rousseff was convicted of manipulating the federal budget without the approval of Congress, in an effort to hide the true level of the country’s deficit prior to her narrow reelection in 2014. The original impeachment request, accepted on December 2, 2015, also charged Rousseff of withholding information on a corruption scandal revolving around Brazil’s state-run oil company, Petrobras.

The scandal involved officials at Petrobras who accepted bribes from Brazil’s largest construction companies and used that money to fund the leftist campaigns of the Workers’ Party — which Rousseff is a member of. Over 150 politicians and businessmen were arrested, but it is unclear if Rousseff herself was directly involved in the money laundering scheme. Examiners discovered these crimes in March 2014. Their investigation was dubbed “Operation Car Wash” because of the gas station where illegally-acquired money was being transferred.

Although the investigation did not directly accuse Rousseff, it proved the existence of corruption on the highest levels of Brazilian business and government. This, combined with Brazil’s plummet into a deep recession after her reelection, was more than enough to disenfranchise the population. Starting in August 2015, hundreds of thousands of Brazilians took to the streets calling for Rousseff’s resignation or removal. 63% of respondents to a poll taken in April 2016 disapproved of her leadership.

In addition, Rousseff was unable to build strong ties within Congress. As Paulo Trevisani and Reed Johnson write in the Wall Street Journal, “She lacked the popular touch… That made it easier for former allies to abandon her when the political winds shifted.” Consequently, in May 2016, the Senate voted with an overwhelming majority to suspend Rousseff from her post and await trial. Vice President Michel Temer, formerly an ally of Rousseff, became interim president until he was officially sworn in on August 31. Because of her unpopularity, the vote was no surprise to the Brazilian media. Jacob Tepper ‘19, when asked about his thoughts on the impeachment, said simply: “She’s a thief. [Her removal was] deserved.”

Rousseff herself, on the other hand, vehemently denied the allegations made against her. She declared that her impeachment was a coup organized by her opponents to oust her and the Workers’ Party. Her supporters, politicians and civilians, have rallied behind this claim. Senator Lindbergh Farias, a member of the Workers’ Party, stated that “It [was] a coup by the Brazilian elite against the working class.”

The impeachment has led many in the United States to question Brazil’s success as a democracy.  A letter to John Kerry, signed by 43 House Democrats, argued that “our government should speak out against the anti-democratic travesty taking place in Brazil.” Written a month before Rousseff’s official removal, it also mentioned concerns regarding the mistreatment of women and afro-Brazilians in the interim government.

James Blume ‘19 takes the dispute of whether or not the impeachment was Democratic even further. He believes the impeachment is “an international embarrassment and an embarrassment for democracy as a whole… With events like these one must question if democracy is truly the universal magic bullet we so often view it as.” In other words, democracy may function successfully in the United States, but may only result in corruption in Brazil. Blume ‘19 also argues that Rousseff is “not a victim, but a perpetrator,” in the sense that she is a democratically elected individual that has abused her power in a dictatorial fashion.

Despite Rousseff’s removal from power, economic forecasts still indicate a decline. The BBC reports that unemployment will soon enter double digits, inflation will continue to rise, and the GDP will decrease by 3.8%. In the coming months, the world will be watching to see how the world’s fifth-largest nation grapples with this political instability.