The nonsense of Waldir Maranhão and his run to instantaneous fame

Just days after assuming the Presidency of the Chamber of Deputies, the deputy Waldir Maranhão (PP/MA, standing for Progressist Party from the state of Maranhão) has taken a surprising yet illegal decision on the morning of this Monday (9) – he simply annulled the plenary session in which the impeachment process against the current President of Brazil, Ms. Dilma Rousseff, was voted and approved by the majority of parliamentarians present there, without previous consulting to his colleagues nor the Internal Regiment of the House. If his action proceeds in the Parliament, the process should come back to the Chamber of Deputies to be voted again.

However, his action is completely illegal and has no legal support to proceed – not only he’s only the Interim President, replacing Eduardo Cunha, who was impeached to continue his regular mandate due to serious accusations of active corruption and other crimes against the National Treasury, but he wasn’t yet the Chief when the voting happened, so he supposedly should not interfere on actions taken previously his come-in. Although I am not any attorney to correctly judge the legality of Maranhão’s procedure, I guess that retroactive interference in court decisions taken by a collective of parliamentarians is not only illegal but also unquestioningly criminal, since Maranhão voted against the impeachment process in the previous voting and, now that he’s in charge, he is doing all he can to deny a massively popular decision in time to help his own private interests.

It might be quite impressive that, since Cunha was taken away from the Presidency of the House, the only parliamentarian he received to a formal meeting was Maranhão, which took a long hour from their time. It is presumed that Cunha instructed his successor to take his decision, although the former President of the Chamber of Deputies had positioned himself completely in favour of Rousseff’s impeachment due to her lack of collegiality during Cunha’s legal process to impeach him. Since there were no reciprocity, Cunha established he would continue Rousseff’s process until the end, which came when he was impeached after the expedition of an injunction. The press has been speculating that Cunha had made a deal with Rousseff, after his exit, to trade a mutual aid, and that is the reason why Maranhão, a previously illustrious unknown figure to most of Brazilians, took a so-careless decision during this hugely messy period the country is going through.

On the afternoon of this Monday, Renan Calheiros, the current president of the Federal Senate, announced that he was utterly against Maranhão’s procedure and that he would continue Rousseff’s impeachment process in the House he presides, as this decision was taken without any previous legal procedure nor any consulting to the voters involved. Said that, we can infer that Maranhão was only pursuing his fifteen minutes of fame as the Interim President of the Chamber of Deputies, and, for now, does not represent great danger to the power that emanates from the people.