A majority of Brazilians had wanted Rousseff out, but few in the country appear to fully grasp the technical grounds for her impeachment: she was convicted of breaking budgetary laws by decreeing minor outlays without congressional approval and delaying payments to state banks. In practice, the impeachment trial served as a vote of no confidence in a President who had led the country into its longest recession in decades. The party she belongs to, the left-leaning Workers’ Party, had also been implicated in a corruption scheme that funnelled billions of dollars into political campaigns and offshore bank accounts during its thirteen years in power. The irony here is that many of the lawmakers who voted for Rousseff’s impeachment are themselves suspects in the scheme. [...]
In framing herself as a tragic hero fighting for the poor, Rousseff elided her own party’s pragmatic deal-making with Brazil’s corrupt establishment. She also underplayed the gravity of her budget maneuvers, which covered up a gaping deficit while she ran for reëlection, in 2014, in a campaign allegedly funded with bribe money. But questions about the process used to impeach her resonated with many Brazilians. According to one survey, only forty-nine per cent of Brazilians believe that the impeachment proceedings obeyed constitutional norms. This contrasts sharply with the broad consensus behind the last impeachment, in 1992, when Fernando Collor de Mello was forced from office amid allegations of personal enrichment. He later returned to political life, as a senator, and this week he voted for Rousseff’s impeachment—a typical twist in Brazilian politics. [...]
Another omission: not once in his first address in office did Temer speak about corruption. For Temer, this made sense. Rousseff’s downfall began when a task force leading an investigation known as Lava Jato (Car Wash) uncovered a scheme to siphon off billions from the state oil company, and Temer’s own P.M.D.B. was soon identified as the Workers’ Party’s main partner in the scheme. For a while, in the mass demonstrations calling for Rousseff’s impeachment, many protesters vowed to keep marching until they brought Temer down, too. But, for now at least, those pledges appear to have faded—even as fresh revelations raise new questions about Temer and high-ranking figures in his new administration. According to the plea-bargain testimony of a construction tycoon, for instance, Temer was the beneficiary of some three hundred thousand dollars skimmed from a nuclear-energy contract. (Temer has denied the accusation.)
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