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

Shaky start for Temer administration

In the end, the vote on whether to open an impeachment trial against President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil’s federal senate passed comfortably. It required only a simple majority of the 81 senators to proceed; in the vote early in the morning of 12 May after 20 hours of debate, 55 senators voted to suspend the president, meaning that Brazil’s vice-president, Michel Temer, assumed the powers of the presidency on an interim basis later that day. Barred from running for elected office again in 2018, the 74-year-old interim president appears determined to eschew the role of caretaker and instead carve a lasting mark on Brazilian politics. But a series of unforced errors, including questionable personnel choices and strong indications that his new team wishes to clamp down on ‘Operation Car Wash’ – the investigations into corruption at the state-owned oil firm Petrobras – promise only further tumult in the months ahead.

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