Former President Dilma Rousseff is impeached

On today’s afternoon (Wednesday, August 31, 2016), the former President of Brazil, Ms. Dilma Vana Rousseff, was officially impeached by the Federal Senate, after voting resulted in 61 in favour of her exit and 20 against. However she still retains her political rights, voted separately from her mandate, making her eligible to new elections. The reunion to decide Rousseff’s destiny had began on last Thursday (August 25) and went through the week (except on Sunday (August 28) until today. Now the Vice-President in exercise of the function of President, Mr. Michel Temer, will be vested as President in an extemporary ceremony at the Chamber of Deputies, and his position remains vacant until new elections, in 2018.

First day – Thursday, August 25

The first day of Rousseff’s trial was intended to read the formal accusations against the former President and to hear the testimonies of accusation witnesses. Ricardo Lewandowski, President of Federal Court of Justice, was replacing the Senate’s President, Renan Calheiros, in order to conduce the trial properly. Just in the beginning of the reunion, around ten parliamentarians rehearsed using regimental resources to prevent the speed of the process, but Lewandowski was strictly against them all and keep on going with the meeting until a deep confusion caused by a discussion between parliamentarians Gleici Hoffmann, Ronaldo Caiado and Lindbergh Farias. Hoffmann declared none of her colleagues had the morality to be there, judging a President, and both senators condemned her behaviour, sparkling a discussion with tons of curses and accusations between themselves. Lewandowski opted for ending the plenary session in order to calm all politicians present there. The session came back afterwards and went on without bigger troubles.

Second day – Friday, August 26

On the second day, Lewandowski and all parliamentarians were supposed to hear the testimonies of defence witnesses. Former ministries of Rousseff’s government were called to testify about her conduct as Head of State, and the defence tried many different ways to disqualify accusation’s witnesses, being them rejected by the President of Federal Court of Justice. However, Caiado and Farias went on another discussion, leading Lewandowski to suspend the reunion and threat both parliamentarians of expelling them from the Plenary. Besides this, there was another discussion happening at the very same time, now between Hoffmann and Calheiros, the President of Senate, but he declared some hours later he was sorry for what he said to his colleague. It was also reported that the senator Ana Amélia had called the Ethics Committee against Hoffmann’s speech in the previous day.

Third day – Saturday, August 27

As the previous session took too long, some defence witnesses were transferred to Saturday, in order not to extend too much the reunion. It was a consensus between these last witnesses that the edict granted by Rousseff were not criminal nor disrespected the budget agreements, despite all proofs shown by the accusation. Since most of parliamentarians were already decided about their votes, the session was only protocol – Rousseff’s opposites were already celebrating their extra official victory and her allies were planning manoeuvres to split the voting in two, being one for her impeachment and the other one for her political rights. This division was successful among parliamentarians some days afterwards.

Fourth day – Monday, August 29

On Monday, parliamentarians were severely anxious, since it was due to be Rousseff’s testimony in front of the Senate and the Brazilian people. The former President came up the pulpit to expatiate about her achievements as a ruling leader and to denounce she was being victim of a coup and that parliamentarians were convicting an innocent person. Rousseff was heavily questioned by all senators, and also by her defenders and detractors, and spoke for around thirteen hours about her government, the illegal negotiations for supplementary credits, and the accusation of fiscal responsibility crime against her. The session ended with Janaína Paschoal, one of the main heads of the impeachment process, questioning Rousseff about the economic crisis in Brazil and about the then President’s inability to deal with it by not hearing Guido Mantega (former ministry of Finance) when he advised her one year before the great eruption, while the people from Workers’ Party (Rousseff’s political party) did not question properly Rousseff, preferring to use their time to extol her government and to claim she was being victim of a parliamentary coup. The reunion took around fourteen hours, and Rousseff was acclaimed by position and opposition for not fail to respond any questions directed to her.

Fifth day – Tuesday, August 30

The following day was remarkable as the last opportunity for both sides to expose their points of views and to discuss the culpability of Rousseff for her manoeuvres to ensnare the National Treasury. Paschoal used her time to defend her position as one of the authors of the impeachment process not to personally offend Rousseff, but to teach her a lesson of honesty and citizenship, alongside the urgent wish to build a better place to her grandchildren. – the jurist also said she was sorry for causing so much suffering to Rousseff, but she couldn’t be quiet watching all this misrepresentation of the Brazilian politics On the other hand, José Eduardo Cardozo, Rousseff’s lawyer, was very incisive when claiming this process was a bogus attempt to belittle the former President’s work as a leader, and that the parliamentarians following the intention of impeach Rousseff would regret this very decision in the future – he even cried when being interviewed by journalists after his defence, alleging he felt tremendously inadmissible with Paschoal citing Rousseff’s grandchildren as a cheap resource to move public opinion.

Sixth day – Wednesday, August 31, 2016

On the last day of the process, it was meant just to vote Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment , but parliamentarians from her party were successful in splitting her judging into two parts – the former President should be voted for her impeachment of continuing her presidential mandate, and after for her right of still be eligible for next elections. In Brazil, if these two things are judged together and the politician is convicted, he loses his political rights and remains ineligible for eight years – just as happened to Fernando Collor de Mello, former President impeached in 1992. Taken the decision, the first voting was extremely tense, but no news to people: with 61 votes in favour and 20 against, and also with no abstentions nor absences, Dilma Rousseff was officially declared impeached of keeping on her presidential mandate. However, in the second voting, there were no consensus among parliamentarians, resulting in 42 in favour of Roussef’s political disablement , 36 against it and 3 abstentions – the minimum quorum required to approve the punishment was 54 favourable votes. With this, Rousseff is not barred from holding public offices nor standing in next election. This last decision was acclaimed by her fellows, but earned mixed reaction on opposition – Hélio Bicudo, jurist and one of the authors of the impeachment process, said he wasn’t as happy as expected, since this last decision did not live up to the Clean Record Law, a federal law that states no politician with court lawsuits are allowed to run for elections. After the ending of the section, Temer had a brief reception to officialise his presidential inauguration and made a speech for open TV channels talking the last news and calling population to keep together throughout the way back to ordinary. Rousseff, meanwhile, is planning a last TV appearance to allege she is suffering a parliamentary coup and that the Senate had convicted an innocent woman due to misogyny and frivolous and unfounded accusations.

Summing up this whole situation: Brazil has now a new President – by far, the country is now on the hands of his interim, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Mr. Rodrigo Maia, since Temer had flew tonight to China, where he joins the G-20 reunion in Shanghai next week – but this is definitely not enough to solve all the problems, since all other corrupt politicians are still ruling the game. Brazil does need an urgent political reform, due to its trouble with endemic corruption and inappropriate conduction of its political representatives. Temer is definitely not the best option to the country, but we do need to learn how to go on step by step when we talk about politics.

Rio 2016: what we can learn from this event

So the Olympics are over... After many medals – actually, not that much for Brazil, although the country had its best results in Olympic Games’ history – and many difficulties, the world had seen Brazil in its best form – or not. Since early 2016, rumour has it that Brazil was completely inappropriate and unprepared to receive this major event. Not only the country was going through a political reverse, but also the constructions for the games were too late and too badly made, which caused a great stir among athletes and the IOC, responsible for Rio 2016 Olympic Games. In addition, a major infectious hecatomb was abridging Brazil: the zika virus, which has already caused many deaths and fetal malformations (mainly microcephaly), and also de-encouraged many athletic delegations to join the Olympics. Yes, now Rio 2016 is over, but there’s a lot to learn from it…

First of all, the opening ceremony. Made with a very reduced budget than previous ones, the opening in Maracanã Stadium was happily praised due to its creativity and its colourful mise-en-scène. However there were criticism about the choices of musical attractions and the almost unnoticeable presence of Michel Temer, Vice President of Brazil in exercise of the function of President of Brazil. Artists such as Karol Conká and Elza Soares were revered by the crowd, as long as Anitta and Caetano Veloso were considered as minor figures – also, the fact that Veloso decided to show his opposition to Dilma Roussef’s impeachment and Temer’s government by raising a panel written “Fora Temer” (Off With Temer) was heavily criticized.

On the other hand, afraid of being booed by the audience, the President asked not to be formally announced, which caused discomfort among the presents, since Temer is officially the Head of Brazilian State and should have been presented as this. The Internet is unforgiving, so it didn’t take too long to start appearing jokes and memes about Temer’s ghost-like apparition.

In addition, an inelegant and unforeseen happening was disgusted by the Heads of State present in the opening: José Serra, the just-nominated Minister of Foreign Affairs, decided to fire the Chief of Ceremonial of Itamaraty’s Palace, Fernando Igreja, one day before the opening ceremony, due to his connections with Rousseff’s government. The firing was reported in the press as something previously arranged, but the truth is even Igreja was caught by surprise.

After the opening, some incident involving foreign athletes were seen as bad to Brazilian portrait in front of all nations: the Brazilian audience, still unprepared for some sports, booed some games and caused stir amongst the athletes and teams; a group of Olympic swimmers got involved in a drunk fight in a gas station and, trying not to be injured by the incident, decided to lie to the police by reporting an armed robbery; and also the critics from some athletes about the audience’s attitude not being suitable for an event such as the Olympic Games. These minor troubles are certainly bad to Brazil in comparison to other countries, but it might be remembered that we are no example of politeness nor morality to anyone.

In the closing ceremony, things went through nicely and Rio de Janeiro passed the Olympic Torch to Tokyo, city in which will happen the next edition of the event, in 2020. Temer wasn’t even present at Maracanã Stadium this time, so his detractors had more than enough reasons to criticize him and his actions as President.

Although people are still surrounded by the Olympic spirit, it is utterly important to notice that municipal elections are about to happen and people must be aware of their representatives in these Legal and Executive bodies. Unfortunately the majority will still be deceived by “panis et circensis”, a way of leading a government as old as time, but we all still fight for development in basic education – fatally, the only way out of this trap.

I'm back

Hello everyone!

Sorry I’ve been away from this space, due to my current job, but I’m back now – and from now on, I hope with a certain regularity. Since my last post many things had happened in Brazil – the biggest one might be the Rio 2016 Olympics, currently happening not only in the city of Rio de Janeiro, but throughout the country, since the city doesn’t have the infrastructure to receive all the sportive events.

I’m now writing a report about the crisis in Michel Temer’s interim presidency, and it will be published soon. There’s another one text, an opinionated essay about the personalisation in the political sphere – I knew I’ve promised not write here down my personal opinion, but sometimes I might post chronicles and essays containing it, since I warn everyone in the title, just like I did in this post.

Hope you all have a great day, and always remember: I am here to inform the news independently of political views, so don’t expect any defence of neither ideologies. Thanks for your attention!

Regards,
Rosa Kälin

The end of the Ministry of Culture and both its benefits and detriments

After the former Vice-President of Brazil, Michel Temer, assumed the Chair of President due to the temporary leave of the former President, Dilma Rousseff, a new ministerial staff was announced by the Interim President, which led some parcel of population to be enraged by the extinction of some ministries and the junction of some of them in one only Ministry. The most commented, however, was the end of the Ministry of Culture and its union with the Ministry of Education, making both areas being reduced to Departments. Meanwhile some people was feeling outraged by the extinction of the Ministry because of the devaluation of culture in nowadays’ Brazil, there are some others who do believe it was the best due to all problems involving the resources’ distribution by the public agency. Both sides have their reasons to defend whichever they want to, but my job here is to analyse the facts and lead you to a great deep reflection.

Before 2016, the Ministry of Culture had been separated from the Ministry of Education since 1985, when the former President, José Sarney, promoted the division of MEC (standing for Ministry of Education and Culture) – this first Ministry was founded in 1953. The separation happened to promote a bigger public interest in arts, because the sector hadn’t been enough valued in Brazil since the beginning of the dictatorial period – the censorship was responsible for throwing the arts into marginality until the re-democratization of the country. However, since then, the Ministry was targeted many times as irresponsible due to its constant troubles with public funds’ distribution and the dependency of tax incentives and financial support from private and public companies, such as Caixa Econômica Federal, Petrobrás, etc.

The most emblematic problem involving the use of public funds by the Ministry of Culture was the creation of Rouanet Law, a federal law created to distribute funds for cultural projects, in order to further encourage culture and access to it for the population. Theoretically an excellent idea, the law had promoted many mistakes due to irregularities in the process of fund-raising and, above all, had left the responsibility of dividing the funds to the companies involved in the cultural market, which led to illegal enrichments, an unjust and unilateral selection of projects which might or might not receive incentives, and financial favouritism for certain artists already known to the public that allowed larger investment amounts than usual to less famous projects.

There are some bizarre projects that received money from the Rouanet Law, leading people to distrust the seriousness of this tax incentive. Just to cite some, we can point to the recording of MC Guimê’s live DVD (Guimê is a very rich and famous singer of funk carioca genre, and invoices around $84,000 monthly, received $145,000 from the government to record his new live concert); the poetry blog “O Mundo Precisa de Poesia”, written by singer Maria Bethânia (in order to publish daily new poems in the blog, the singer received $381,000 from tax incentives to pay her expenses with the website); the financial support to singer Luan Santana’s national tour (Santana is a singer of sertanejo genre, whose fortune is estimated in $8,45 millions, pocketed $1,15 million to make a tour through the whole country, in order to broadcast the sertanejo genre everywhere); the financial support to singer Cláudia Leitte’s tour (Leitte is as famous as Luan Santana, has a fortune estimated in $5,64 millions, and pocketed $1,7 million from tax incentives to tour Brazil); and, finally, the series of concerts by maestro João Carlos Martins that never happened and which incentive the musician never requested (an enterprise, without the knowledge or consent of the maestro, requested tax incentives and received $7 millions – after the scandal, the maestro ordered the company to give the money back to the National Treasury, and sued it for involving his name in an illegal procedure of corruption and money laundering.

The dismemberment of the Ministry into a Department of Culture was seen by many artists as one more proof of the illegitimate government by Michel Temer, but they forget that both Culture and Education have been walking together in Brazil’s history since a long time ago and that their union is not any news to politics. The ones in favour of the extinction claims that the Ministry’s infrastructure was already too damaged and that a complete housecleaning was in urgent order.

However, what it is most urgent to solve amidst this is the irregularities attributed to Rouanet Law because the Brazilian economy finds itself stuck in a crisis and, by the capitalist think, the arts are not an essential basic need to people – at least, not as essential as water, air, electric energy, petrol, agriculture, livestock, or any other necessaries. By the other side, arts incentive is utterly important to any culture and social structure, so it must have some public company to take care of this part – no matter if it is a Ministry, a Department, a Section, or anything – so, the ones complaining about the new Department must remember that, while culture doesn’t earn enough importance again to be put once more as a Ministry, we need to accept and help the Department in order to not leave the culture behind, because we still need it near us.

Independently if you accept or not the governmental regime, you might support Marcelo Calero, the new Secretary of Culture, to continue the actual projects directed to the arts’ promotion and free access to them by the low-income population. Invading buildings once occupied by the Ministry and promoting wild riots in an attempt to call attention is not the solution, but keep on going to the theatre and cultural events promoted by the public companies is.

Why people should read more carefully political contracts before signing

“I read and agree with the terms of the contract”. Yes, this is the biggest lie ever. Mostly ever we did not read any line of this contract, leading us to have great trouble in dealing with misfortunes and unplanned events. Consumers’ right is one of the hardest things to deal with because of these setbacks, but the most important rule is: if it is precisely described in the contract, it must be accomplished and, since the client sign it, he agrees with everything written down there. If he doesn’t, he must had discussed the terms before signing.

Said that, we can start to think about politics and the terms of its contract, in accordance to what Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in his masterpiece “Leviathan”: to validate the social contract, the population must either accept all terms of it or discuss certain themes to decide what is the best to do about them. It is the very same axiom used by the business to talk about the signing of contracts – so, until here, no mysteries, I guess. So why is there a riot happening now in Brazil, after the former President, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached to continue her government and her Vice-President, Michel Temer, assumed interim the Head Office of the country? Why is people accusing Temer of scammer, claiming he was not legally elected, so he cannot continue his government? And, finally: why people still think Rousseff’s impeachment was a coup?

To get it started, the first thing I should clarify here is: Michel Temer was, in fact, democratically elected to his chair – of Vice-President. He was by Rousseff’s side during the presidential run, and was a very good professional as Vice-President until her exit. Like in any other place in which runs a presidential democratic regime, when the President has something important to do that might prevents him/her to keep up with his/her formal activities and agenda, it is the Vice-President’s obligation to resume business and continue his Chief’s activities, in order to avoid delays in political daily routine. When Rousseff was temporarily away from her duties – for instance, during official visits to countries abroad – it was Temer who used to substitute her, for example, to sign federal decrees. These events did never disquieted the population, who voted also for Temer when voted for Rousseff.

However, when she was accused of sabotage the national finances, she was forced by both Chamber of the Deputies and Federal Senate to leave her chair, and Temer assumed as Interim President of Brazil, which led Rousseff’s supporters riot against his tenure and question the legality of the formal proceedings that formalize Temer’s government. There is no crime nor mistake in his lead, because he was already the Vice-President and just assumed the presidential function due to the exit of the former President. So, here I state the first certainty: there was no coup in Brazil, only the Vice-President assuming the presidential duties and replacing his Chief.

Since there is no coup happening in Brazil, we still have to work on the country’s image abroad – most countries, listening to only a parcel of critiques and news from here, stated their support to Rousseff and started spreading that she was put out due to a coup. However, had these representatives any information about the reasons behind Rousseff’s exit?

Do they know she was taken from the government because she did made up official finances to deceive the National Treasury? Do they know she was one of the Head Officers in Petrobras, the oil company that was recently reduced to an insignificant parcel of what it used to be some years ago because of a billionaire financial gap of $25.3 billions, meanwhile the embezzlement was happening inside the enterprise? If they are all aware of these, and still support her government, that means they have no problems in repeating these actions in their own countries – by these, I mean misusing the public money or defrauding his country’s accountability, or else let their biggest oil company wrack due to an enormous public debt. If they are willing to do any of these, I sincerely do not trust in these countries – in fact, they are the real scammers, not Brazil.

President Salvador Sanchéz Crén, from El Salvador, one of the few countries that did not recognize Temer's government

Summarizing: before voting in any candidate to the Presidency, please read carefully the terms of the contract – which includes the Vice-President – because if you don’t agree with them, just change your candidate. The fact is if you accept a candidate to the Presidency, it means you also accept all his/her back-up gang. Temer was already a great ally to Rousseff before assuming the Vice-Presidency and it didn’t change a bit during her government. Only when she was about to be evicted from the Head Office, Temer started to discuss and make agreements to be put in practice when he assumes interim. He maintained some Ministers nominated by Rousseff, but changed others due to political interests – not differing from any previous President did when they were assuming the Chair. In addition, there is one other detail: it’s been only one week since Roussseff was officially away from her duties and that Temer assumed, so it is too early yet to judge whether he acted correctly or not. There is only one way out: only time…

Dilma Rousseff was impeached and Michel Temer assumes as Interim President

Now it’s official: after struggling months with doubts and uncertainties, the former President of the Federative Republic of Brazil, Ms. Dilma Vana Rousseff, was ultimately impeached to continue her mandate for the next 180 days, until the final voting session to decide whether she will lose or not her government power and the official title of President. From today until then, the Presidency will be temporarily occupied by her current Vice-President, Mr. Michel Miguel Elias Temer Lulia. If Rousseff renounces her government, or if she is convicted in the last instance of the legislative process of her impeachment, Temer will be the Interim President until the next presidential run, scheduled to happen in 2018.

The last voting session took place at the Federal Senate, and went from 7:00pm (Brasília time zone) of last Wednesday (11) until the early hours of today (May 12th). The score was 55 votes in favour of Rousseff’s impeachment, 22 against it, zero abstentions, and two absences – the minimum required to approve any matter in the Senate is simple majority, that is 40 parliamentarians. Rousseff was officially notified on this morning and, some hours later, presented a speech to the press and the general public in which she reinforced the illegitimacy of her exit and also that there are no evidences proving the crimes she’s being accused.

The voting in the Senate happened without any general confusion or mess, opposite to what happened in the previous voting session in the Chamber of the Deputies, on April 17th, in which the parliamentarians were out of control, each one aggressively defending their political views. Although there were some breaks, the session took twenty exhausting hours and was dragged and tiresome.

The most applauded speech was Aécio Neves’s, ex-opponent to Rousseff during the last presidential run, in which he criticizes how the former President had been conducting Brazil’s political economy – he voted in favour of her impeachment. On the other side, the most silent moment throughout the voting was when the Senator Fernando Collor de Mello, former President of Brazil from 1990 to 1992 and who was also impeached to finish his mandate, went up the tribune to declare his vote – Collor said he warned Rousseff of her risks on keeping up with the government (he renounced before the voting in the Senate, so he only lost his political rights for 8 years), but the Office of the President “turned a deaf ear to me, relegate my experience”.

After Collor voted in favour of Rousseff’s exit, the current President of the Federal Senate, Renan Calheiros, discoursed about the repetition of mistakes in the government and how she lost the centrality of Brazilian nation. When the minimum quorum was reached to evict Rousseff from the government, the ruling parliamentarians, hopeless, opted to attack the decision taken by their colleagues. However, the result of voting clarified the majority dissatisfaction with Rousseff – although she states there were no crimes, the depth of her involvement in recent corruption scandals provoked the increase of dissatisfied people with her government and the whole PT era (PT, standing for Workers’ Party).

Just few hours after Rousseff and Temer were both notified of the power transition, the current Interim President presented his brand-new ministerial crew, with 22 official files instead of the 32 existing in Rousseff’s mandate. Some nominations, however, were a bit awkwardly received by the public: Gilberto Kassab (PSD/SP, standing for Social Democracy’s Party for São Paulo state) assumes the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications; Raul Jungmann (PPS/PE, standing for Popular Socialist Party for Pernambuco state) goes to the Ministry of Defense; Romero Jucá (PMDB/RR, standing for Brazilian Democratic Movement Party for Roraima state) takes on the Ministry of Planning, Development and Management; Geddel Vieira Lima (PMDB/BA, for Bahia state) is the new Chief Minister of Government Secretariat; Sérgio Etchegoyen, ex-Army Staff Chief, is now Chief Minister of Institutional Security Office; Bruno Araújo (PSDB/PE, standing for Brazilian Social Democracy Party) gets the Ministry of Villages; Blairo Maggi (PP/MT, standing for Progressive Party for Mato Grosso state) is now the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply; Henrique Meirelles, ex-president of Banco do Brasil (Brazil’s Bank), takes the Ministry of Finance; Mendonça Filho (DEM/PE, standing for Democrats) assumes the Ministry of Education and Culture; Eliseu Padilha (PMDB/RS, for Rio Grande do Sul state) was nominated as the new Chief Minister of Civil House; Osmar Terra (PMDB/RS) gets the Ministry of Social and Agrarian Development; Leonardo Picciani (PMDB/RJ, for Rio de Janeiro state) assumes the Ministry of Sports; Ricardo Barros (PP/PR, for Paraná state) is now the Minister of Health; José Sarney Filho (PV/MA, standing for Green Party for Maranhão state) gets the Ministry of Environment; Henrique Alves, who was Minister of Tourism during the first part of Rousseff’s second mandate and was fired by her, returns to his post with Temer as Interim President; José Serra (PSDB/SP) is the new Minister of International Affaires; Ronaldo Nogueira de Oliveira (PTB/RS, standing for Brazilian Worker’s Party) assumes the Ministry of Labour; Alexandre de Moraes, lawyer and legal consultant, is the new Minister of Justice; Maurício Quintella (PR/AL, standing for Republican Party for Alagoas state) gets the Ministry of Transport, Ports and Civil Aviation; Fabiano Augusto Martins Silveira, former Counselor at the National Council of Justice, now assumes as Minister of Supervision, Transparency and Control (previously known as the General Council of the Union); Marcos Pereira (PRB/ES, standing for Brazilian Republican Party for Espírito Santo state) gets the Ministry of Industry and Trade; and, finally, Fábio Medina Osório, jurist, assumes the General Attorney of the Union.

About some of the chosen ones: Kassab was already Minister of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications during Rousseff’s government; Jucá was one of the main responsibles for the continuity of the impeachment process; Vieira Lima is heavily cited in documents related to Operação Lava-Jato (Car Wash Operation); Araújo was the deputy responsible to the deciding vote at the Chamber of the Deputies to continue Rousseff’s impeachment; Padilha was Minister of Civil Aviation during FHC (standing for Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil from 1994 to 2002), and was accused of irregularities in the payment of court orders; Sarney Filho is the son of José Sarney, former President of Brazil from 1985 to 1990, replacing Tancredo Neves, deceased before taking office, and also he was already Minister of Environment during FHC’s government; Serra was already candidate to the Presidency of Brazil twice, but was beaten first by Lula (2002) and after by Rousseff (2010); Quintella was convicted for joining a corruption scheme which diverted money intended for the payment of school meals, during his mandate as Secretary of Education in Alagoas state. By all these informations, it’s not that hard to infer that, although Rousseff was taken away from the government, there are still a lot of work to do in the name of Brazilian political welfare, so are there to heal the systemic corruption knotty to Brazilian corruption system.

Dilma Rousseff, until new changes, is not anymore the President of Brazil, and this is a true victory to Brazilian Parliament, since Rousseff was seen as persona non grata amidst parliamentarians due to her lack of dialogue with both Senate and Chamber of Deputies. However, having Temer as Interim President might be also dangerous to the actual fragile political system in the country, as he has a huge amount of work to do.

The economy is failed and destroyed; the politicians are very divided and making harder the agreements utterly important to approve laws; the society is still fiery, waiting for immediate results, and it’s his function to avoid new public uprisings if these changes do not come in the speed it wishes. Finally, he also must deal with the implications of the police investigation on Operação Lava-Jato, since Rousseff’s exit is not the last stand of the hard work the Legislative has been doing – there are still many things to be explained by the investigation, and Temer should not make any move to try avoiding it, or else the population will be angrily right to go and protest on the streets, as he will be doing the same thing Rousseff tried to do in her final months as President.

Understanding Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process and the line to the Executive branch

On the last Sunday (August 17th), the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies voted the impeachment request to the current President of Brazil, Ms. Dilma Vana Rousseff, which was approved by the majority of the present deputies – the actual scoreboard was 367 votes in favor of the request, 137 against it, and two absences. As a result of this voting process, the legal issue will now be voted at the Federal Senate. The legal process there will start very soon, with the election of a special committee to analyze the issue, and if hold until the end with favorable result to all Rousseff's political opponents, the President will be deprived of her services and her political rights will be impeached for a period of eight years. The President is being accused of crimes of fiscal responsibility and against the Treasury, mainly because of the recently discovered makeup in the accounting records, the infamous "pedaling taxes" – a budgetary maneuver to delay transfers of public money to banks (private and public ones) and authorities, luring the financial market to present lower expenses than it really was.

Said this, we do need to talk about the line to the Executive branch – the actual representatives in the government have all legal issues holding their backs, as they are accused of active corruption, money laundering, misuse of public funds, and several other crimes against the Treasury and in favor of self-benefits. The first one in the line to replace Rousseff is the Vice-President, Mr. Michel Temer – he is being accused of heading the financial transactions which led to the "pedaling taxes", and crimes of fiscal responsibility, since he hasn't help avoiding the economic crisis that overflows the country nowadays. Since these accusations have been spread by the press, an impeachment process was open against Temer in April 6th of the present year, but it was archived by Mr. Renan Calheiros, current President of the Federal Senate, the next day. However, people are unsatisfied with Temer, trying to refrain the idea of having him as the Interim President, so a new process is being studied meanwhile Rousseff is facing hers. If she were impeached, Temer would take the lead by the rest of her presidential term. Nevertheless, if Temer were pulled out of the government by the impeachment process, the next one in the line is the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Mr. Eduardo Cunha.

Eduardo Cunha has been the President of the Chamber of Deputies since February 2015 and, since then, has been target of many critics and of many minority groups due to his hate speech against the LGBT community and Afro-Brazilian religions. Cunha is a notorious evangelical pastor, and was elected with more than 200,000 votes for his third term as Federal Deputy. However, since August 2015, his name was involved in the investigation about the corruption scandal in Petrobras, the biggest oil company in Brazil, named as "Operação Lava-Jato" (Operation Car Wash). The company has been involved in an enormous corruption globalization, which led Petrobras to lose around $1,748 billion in bribery and racketeering. Cunha was accused of being the bridge between his political party (PMDB, standing for Party of Brazilian Democratic Movement) and the International Board of the oil company, receiving around $1,400 million in bribes. Besides, he's been targeted as an extremist religious and as an intolerant of social minorities, such as homosexuals and black people. If he assumes the government, the Federal Constitution of 1988 says he must call the Brazilians for a new election in the period of 90 days – which means the country would begin again the process of choosing a new President right after the abrupt exit of the last one.

In other words: Brazil is filled with corrupt and dishonest politicians in each and every phase of the public sphere, so either Rousseff being expelled or not from the government, people are still struggling with bad character politicians and the budget gap caused by successive and significant corruption scandals involving public funds. Neither Rousseff nor Temer can do any good to Brazil if they continue ruling the country, since they have no more the political support in the National Congress or the wide acceptance of the population. Cunha would be just a temporary chief, but we must be warned about him and his extremism – if he takes enough time, he might undo important changes about the minorities he clearly disrespect in his speeches. If we have the exit of both President and Vice President, this means the Brazilian population had failed in choosing their biggest representative, since Rousseff, when elected, was already with Temer by her side, so they were elected together. The most urgent change to be done in the Brazilian politics is the total eradication of any parliamentarian involved with any corruption accusation from the Legislative Houses but, if we do that now, we might be risking ascend to the maximum power of the country a real circus clown or a retired soccer player – so, any plans of political reform must wait this whole confusion settles down to take place.