Kátia Abreu exposes the grand game of petty interests in the Senate.
In an article published this Saturday, Senator Kátia Abreu (PMDB-TO) attributes the 2016 parliamentary coup to the backroom deals opened by interim President Michel Temer in the Chamber and the Senate and, once again, reinforces that President Dilma Rousseff did not commit any crime of responsibility; "The architects of the removal were left with the political route. Every impeachment is a political act that cannot do without a legal basis. If we were in a parliamentary system, a vote of no confidence would suffice. However, that is not our case," she says.
Tocantins 247 – In an article published this Saturday, Senator Kátia Abreu (PMDB-TO) attributes the 2016 parliamentary coup to the backroom deals opened by interim President Michel Temer in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and once again reinforces that President Dilma Rousseff did not commit any impeachable offense. Read below:
A BIG GAME OF SMALL INTERESTS
At this point, after all the investigations and lengthy discussions, it is unacceptable to conclude that Dilma Rousseff committed a crime of responsibility and, therefore, that the impeachment process should result in her removal from office. The story is different.
Anyone who takes the time to analyze the economic indicators of recent years will realize that we have experienced a reduction in economic activity, largely influenced by external factors. Falling commodity prices, changes in US monetary policy, and a slowdown in the Chinese economy are among the main ones.
Faced with this adverse scenario, and seeking to minimize its impact on the population, the government implemented stimulus measures. This move was successful and preserved social progress.
With the worst of the crisis behind us, it became necessary to implement another set of more structural measures to ensure greater fiscal stability.
At the end of 2015, the government sent legislative measures to the Chamber of Deputies necessary for the recovery of the country's fiscal health. It faced enormous resistance. In addition to preventing the voting on fundamental projects, the then president of the Chamber, Eduardo Cunha, used these so-called "bomb bills" as an element of political terrorism to destabilize the government.
The stage was set for the impeachment proposal. The claim that there had been crimes of responsibility in administrative acts was a disguise for a political maneuver of the worst kind, which took advantage of the president's declining popularity to try to oust her. A grand game of petty interests.
This maneuver was exposed when, one by one, the false arguments of those advocating for impeachment were dismantled. On June 27th, an expert analysis prepared by Senate technicians found no evidence of any action by the president in the decision to delay payments to public banks for subsidies under the Plano Safra program. In other words, there was no fiscal manipulation.
Less than a month later, the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in Brasília asked the Federal Court to dismiss the investigation opened to determine whether there had been a crime of responsibility in the government's financial operations. Prosecutor Ivan Cláudio Marx concluded that there had been no credit operation without legislative authorization. Once again: there was no fiscal irresponsibility.
The only option left to orchestrate the removal was through politics. Every impeachment is a political act that cannot exist without a legal basis. If we were in a parliamentary system, a vote of no confidence would suffice. That is not the case here, however.
We cannot be naive. Without proof of the crime the president is accused of, she cannot be removed from a position to which she was elected by the majority of Brazilians. Politics should not serve this purpose.
We also cannot, under any circumstances, succumb to the easy cliché that the president was lenient with corruption. Operation Lava Jato began in 2014 – during Dilma's government, therefore – and the deeper it delves into the underworld of Brazilian politics, the clearer it becomes that corruption has no defined time horizon nor is it confined to a particular party. Unfortunately.
The Federal Senate now has the task of deciding on the definitive removal of the president. I hope my colleagues will very carefully consider the precedent they will be setting if they allow this to happen.
Nelson Rodrigues said that, often, it is the lack of character that decides a match, that literature, politics, and football are not made with good feelings. I want, at the end of this process, and with regard to politics, to have reasons to disagree with him.