Vote to Impeach President Dilma Rousseff Annulled in Brazil

The new speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress on Monday annulled the vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, throwing the power struggle in Latin America’s largest country into confusion.

The move came just two days before the Senate is expected to decide on whether to remove Ms. Rousseff from office and put her on trial.

Ms. Rousseff is facing accusations that she borrowed money from state banks to plug budget holes, masking the depths of Brazil’s economic troubles in order to bolster her re-election prospects. Until the surprise decision on Monday, few expected her to survive the vote in the Senate this week on her suspension.

Now politicians are scrambling to determine how the decision might affect the president’s fate, with her opponents rushing to challenge the ruling before the Supreme Court.

“Dilma’s government was on its death bed, so anything like this that creates a mess could be positive for her,” said Thiago de Aragão, a political risk consultant in the capital, Brasília.

Still, Mr. de Aragão cautioned that legal scholars and opposition figures were already mounting a formidable challenge to Monday’s decision.

“Nothing is settled right now,” said Mr. da Aragão. “The Supreme Court or the Chamber of Deputies itself will likely say this is invalid. But that doesn’t mean that chaos isn’t the word of the day.”

Earlier on...

On April 17, lawmakers in the lower house of Congress chose overwhelmingly, with 367 lawmakers voting for impeachment, 137 voting against and seven abstaining, to send Ms. Rousseff’s case to the Senate, which will decide if she should be suspended and go on trial.

But doubt was cast on that process on Monday by Waldir Maranhão, a previously obscure lawmaker who took the helm of the Chamber of Deputies last week after the Supreme Court ordered his predecessor to step down to face a graft trial.

Mr. Maranhão contended that procedural rules had been broken in the impeachment vote against the president last month, saying the lower house should hold a new one.

 

Waldir Maranhão, the new speaker of Brazil’s lower house of Congress,

on Monday annulled the vote to impeach Ms. Rouseff, contending

that procedural rules had been broken.

Leaders in the Senate signaled that they had no plan to reschedule their vote on whether to suspend Ms. Rousseff on Wednesday. Raimundo Lira, the senator at the helm of that body’s impeachment commission, said that Mr. Maranhão’s decision had no “practical effect.”

Ms. Rousseff responded by urging “caution,” saying that she didn’t know the consequences of the decision, while some of her supporters embraced it.

“We know that the impeachment process wasn’t done in the right way,” said Benedita da Silva, a lawmaker from Ms. Rousseff’s leftist Workers’ Party. “We hope that Maranhão will stay firm in his decision.”

Opponents, however, derided the move.

“The decision has no value whatsoever,” said Ronaldo Caiado, a senator from the conservative Democrats Party. “It’s just an act of the government’s desperation and five minutes of fame for the guy in charge.”

Many of the nation’s leaders were already preparing for Ms. Rousseff’s suspension. Michel Temer, the vice president who broke with Ms. Rousseff and has become the country’s leader in waiting, has been seeking to assemble a cabinet in recent weeks, drawing potential ministers largely from his centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and the opposition Social Democrats.