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Brazil & Southern Cone - April 2016 (ISSN 1741-4431)

BRAZIL POLITICS: Is this a coup?

Over the past few months, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has repeated over and over again the argument that the impeachment process against her is a “coup”. By this, she means a “breaking of Brazil’s democratic order”. She insists that she has committed no “crime of responsibility” that would justify her impeachment. Charged with using state-backed banks to mask a budget deficit in the run-up to the 2014 election, Rousseff has repeatedly pointed out that Brazil’s law of fiscal responsibility has been more honoured in the breach than the observance. A majority of Brazil’s current governors would be thrown out of office if the law was applied rigidly; both of Rousseff’s predecessors, Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2002) and Lula da Silva (2003-2010), would also have lost office. But the case against Rousseff is not as straightforward as either her detractors or her supporters would claim. Nevertheless the use of the word “coup” is proving an effective defensive strategy. While the Left in Brazil is in disarray after the 17 April vote in the federal chamber of deputies in favour of impeachment, it is in this argument that its hope for future victories lie.

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