Above Photo: Mark Weisbrot: “This is not what the Brazilian people voted for in the last three elections.” (photo: CEPR)
Janine Jackson: A crawler at the top of the New York Times website announced “Breaking news: Dilma Rousseff, accused of misconduct as president, has been impeached, ending the power struggle consuming Brazil.” That sounds like an unlikely outcome, even to those who haven’t been able to follow all the twists and turns of events in Brazil. But what accounts for the difference between those who see something being resolved in recent political events, and those who see something being violated?
Joining us now to help sort through things is Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Failed: What the “Experts” Got Wrong About the Global Economy. He joins us by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Mark Weisbrot.
Mark Weisbrot: Thanks, it’s great to be with you.
JJ: Can you help us understand, especially, the last few steps? Because the last I heard was that a court had said that the charges against Dilma Rousseff were not impeachable. And I also seem to remember hearing that Michel Temer wasn’t going to be able to hold office for eight years. So what happened, just recently, to bring us to this moment?
MW: The prosecutor, the federal prosecutor who was in charge of the case, decided that what she was being impeached for, this financial maneuver, was not a crime. So that’s, I think, very important. And most people don’t know that. In fact, most people probably think that she was impeached for something having to do with corruption. But the Senate voted to remove her from office anyway, on August 29, and of course that isn’t going to settle the question.
As for Temer, who takes over as president, he’s been banned by the courts from running for office again for the next eight years, but it doesn’t stop him from finishing this two years of Dilma’s term. So that’s where it stands right now. But there’s already been big protests, people demanding new elections, because nobody likes Temer, and a lot of people see it as a coup.
JJ: Well, that’s my understanding, and I’m wondering how you can get to a place where it sounds like this was a political process working itself out legitimately. And I think one element of that was brought up by Glenn Greenwald on Democracy Now!. He said that Brazilian media were playing up the idea that, you know, impeachment is part of the democratic process, that’s a thing they do in America and in Europe — without making the distinction that in the United States, for example, if a president is impeached, the vice president takes over, not the opposition party.
MW: Yes. Well, the vice president did take over, but he’s also with a big opposition party. It was a coalition government. The Workers Party won the presidency, but they don’t control the Congress. So, basically, this is the right really taking over and trying to reverse the results of the last three elections. I mean, there is some similarity to the United States, in the sense, if you remember the Clinton impeachment–
JJ: Right.
MW: I think that was obviously a political move, and ultimately it didn’t prevail. They actually, at least, had a couple of crimes, I think that’s the difference, or at least alleged crimes. They had obstruction of justice and perjury, and they tried to make it into a impeachable offense, and the Senate decided it wasn’t. Here it is a little more outrageous in Brazil, because they didn’t really even have a crime.
And you did see some criticism of it from, first, the head of the Organization of American States, who is a very staunch US ally, nonetheless criticized it. So did the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, that’s from the OAS also, their independent body. They criticized it, too. But in Washington, you had absolutely no criticism at all from NGOs and human rights groups, and in fact, Human Rights Watch, Americas Watch division, the head of that, Jose Miguel Vivanco, actually was quoted in the Brazilian press on the day of the impeachment, and praised the democratic process in Brazil, and seemed to be very supportive of it.
JJ: Is there a sense that there’s some reflection of the popular will going on here, apart from what’s happening in terms of the political processes? I mean, it is fair to characterize the Brazilian public as unhappy in general terms.
MW: There was a reflection of popular will in terms of, you know, there’s a deep recession and Dilma was unpopular.
JJ: Right.
MW: But, on the other hand, nobody wanted Temer to take over. So there was a big call for new elections, and that’s what a lot of people are demanding now, and very few people want this right-wing government that’s going to try and reverse the social and economic progress of the last 14 years.
The Workers Party did do pretty well until just two years ago. They had reduced poverty by 55 percent and extreme poverty by 65 percent, and doubled the minimum wage in real terms. And this government came in, they said they’re going to double down on the austerity, and they got rid of the Ministry for Women and Human Rights, and they appointed a cabinet of all white men.
So this is really the biggest change without an election since the 1964 coup that brought in the military dictatorship. I think that’s why I don’t think it’s over yet. I mean, people are definitely going to resist this. And it’s unfortunate that the United States played such a negative role in the whole thing. That part was really completely ignored in the US press.
JJ: What should we know about the role that the US in fact played, and what should we be looking out for down the road?
MW: Well, we won’t know everything for probably a long time, if ever, but we do know, first of all, that on August 5, John Kerry, secretary of State, went there and did a joint press conference with the acting foreign minister, Jose Serra, of Brazil, and they praised the new relationship that the United States is going to have with Brazil. And so it was a real strong statement of support, without saying, “We support the coup.”
Because, after all, this wasn’t even the elected government he was dealing with. This is not a normal protocol for him to do. He should have waited till at least it was decided that Dilma was going to be permanently removed from office. Even if you think the impeachment process is legitimate, which, as I said, most people didn’t, he still didn’t have to do that. That was really a very strong message that they supported this coup.
And there was another one prior to that, back in April. Just three days after the lower house of the Brazilian Congress voted to impeach Dilma, you had a meeting between the No. 3 official in the State Department, Tom Shannon, who’s also the former US ambassador to Brazil, and the one likely making these decisions of what to do about the coup. He met with one of the leaders of the impeachment, Sen. Aloysio Nunes from the Brazilian Senate. And this was another and a very early signal, very strong signal that the US was on their side. Because, again, he didn’t have to have that meeting; they weren’t going to meet with, say, Dilma, for example. That’s the way that they took sides, and let everybody know that the US was on the side of this impeachment or coup.
JJ: Let me just ask you, finally, what were other possible ways forward? And are they still possible?
MW: Yeah, I think that this government’s going to be very unpopular. The demand for new elections is going to increase. But if that doesn’t happen, I think you’ll have two years and then the Workers Party will come back. Former President Lula de Silva has already pretty much indicated he’s going to run. He’s popular in the polls; according to polls now, he would win if the election were held today. So I don’t think it’s over, because, again, this is a real right-wing thing that’s going on. This is not what the Brazilian people voted for in the last three elections.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Mark Weisbrot from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Find their work online at CEPR.net. Mark Weisbrot, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
MW: Thank you.