Brazil: Senate wrangle suspends Rousseff´s trial

By Senabri Silvestre

SANTO DOMINGO, Dom. Rep. (AA) – The second day of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment trial was temporarily suspended twice Friday amid verbal confrontations between senators, local media said.

Tension began when Rousseff defender and Workers Party co-member, Gleisi Hoffmann, questioned the Senate's moral ability to judge the suspended president.

At least 49 senators have been convicted or are accused of criminal activity, according to the AFP news agency that earlier this year cited a Transparency Brazil report. The charges range from widespread corruption at state-run oil company Petrobras, to bribes to cockfighting.

"This session has become a madhouse,” the head of the Upper House of Congress Renan Calheiros said in response, according to O Globo newspaper.

Calheiros, who has a dozen pending cases against him in the courts, said the body is losing the opportunity to establish itself as a truly democratic institution and the session had shown that "stupidity is infinite".

Supreme Court President Ricardo Lewandowski, asked senators to put aside their ideological and partisan differences for the sake of the work at hand but he was eventually forced to suspend the session amid all of the screaming.

The democratically-elected president is accused of violating fiscal rules to hide a budget deficit ahead of the 2014 presidential elections.

The charges are “crimes of responsibility” and not criminal but administrative sanctions that could strip her from her post if 54 senators of a total of 81 vote in favor of her removal.

Her dismissal appears imminent considering 51 senators indicated in a poll on the eve of the start of the trial that they would vote in favor for removal.

If the actions pass, interim President Michel Temer would remain in his position until elections are held in 2018 -- the end of Rousseff’s term.

Should she survive, Rousseff would recover her position and Temer would go back to his position as vice president.

Rousseff is expected to present her defense next week before a final vote on her political fate is held before the full Senate.

She has maintained her innocence and reiterated Wednesday that her impeachment is "a farce" woven by the economic "elite" who want a conquest of the social classes.

Rousseff has also called the trial a “coup” and believes economic powers are trying to implement neoliberal policies to privatize “everything they can” and submit Brazilian sovereignty to the big capitals.