A New Era for Brazil

The Brazilian Senate impeached President Dilma Rousseff yesterday, bringing an end to the era of Worker Party rule, which began there in 2003.Rousseff and her supporters have disingenuously denounced the impeachment, calling it a coup d ’état. But it is likely that her removal from office will strengthen the country’s institutions and lead to an improvement in the policies that have led Brazil into its worst recession since the 1930s and that Latin Americans in recent years considered a model to emulate because it was seen to combine economic stability and enlightened social policies.Let ’s first of all dismiss the idea that Rousseff’s impeachment amounts to a coup. Whether we favored the political trial or not, it was conducted under the rule of law, and to assume otherwise weakens the legitimacy of the Congress and Brazilian democracy. As my colleague Juan Carlos Hidalgo haspointed out, the Constitution clearly delineates how and in which circumstances an impeachment should be carried out, and the Supreme Court has endorsed the legitimacy of this particular case. The fact that eight out of eleven members of the court were appointed by Rousseff and her Worker Party (PT) predecessor, Lula da Silva, undermines the credibility of coup claims.The last time a Brazilian president was impeached was in 1992 and, as analysts Diogo Costa and Magno Karlobserve, it was hailed as a “Victory of Democracy,” and ended up improving the country’s policies. (And it’s not that ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs