“Parliamentary Coup”: Impeachment of Brazil’s President Rousseff Hands Power to Corrupt, Unelected Right Wing

2 September 2016

 - Brazil’s left-wing president, Dilma Rousseff, has officially been impeached, in what critics are calling a “coup” and an attack on democracy.

The new right-wing president who will replace her until 2018 was not elected and is unable to run in the next election because he was found guilty of violating campaign-finance limits.

Members of Brazil’s Senate voted 61 to 20 on Wednesday to convict Rousseff of breaking budget laws. They accused Rousseff of corruption for manipulating government accounts in order to hide a budget shortfall. She has pointed out that previous governments did exactly the same thing.

Meanwhile, the majority of the lawmakers who impeached Rousseff face their own investigations for often extreme forms of corruption. Agence France‑Presse has referred to Brazil’s congress as a “den of corruption.”