Just a week ago, all eyes were on Brazil for all the right reasons - the Olympic Games. However, this was not a good a time for ousting Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. The country’s Senate was voting to have her impeached from office. As of August 3, 2016, more than three-quarters of the Senate had voted for her impeachment, while only a paltry 21 voted against her removal from office.
Aljazeera’s Lucia Newman reporting from Rio De Janiero on that fateful August 3, 2016, stated that the Senate was still in the process of voting. However, she added that only a single charge against the president was still pending and the other three had been voted in favor of the Senate.
President Rousseff is currently accused of four counts, one of them being accounting malpractices and manipulating the budget to cover Brazil’s crumbling economy. On her side, the president denied the allegations referring to the attempt to oust her as a ’coup.' According to Reuters, the president’s opponents would require only a simple majority to put her on trial. The opposition also thinks that such habits like spending without congressional approval may have led to her re-election back in 2014.
Temer, Rousseff’s center right running mate, is currently the sitting president of the country until the next election in 2018, and he hopes to be elected. He presided over the opening of the Olympic Games and unluckily drew boos from the crowds who called for his resignation. It can be recalled that Rousseff also drew the same boos when officiating the World Cup football games in 2014.
