The Brazilian Senate voted decisively to continue impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff, who will now be replaced for six months by Vice President Michel Temer while the allegations against her are investigated. While not as theatrical and raucous as the impeachment vote in congress on April 17, the Senate debate spoke volumes about the state of Brazil’s increasingly dysfunctional politics.
Senator José Serra of the PSDB, the main opposition party, called the impeachment process a “quasi-tragedy” for the country and a “bitter though necessary medicine.“ Serra is best known as a two-time former presidential candidate, beaten by both Luiz Inácio ”Lula“ da Silva in 2002 and Rousseff in 2010. While he will undoubtedly be invigorated by a degree of schadenfreude, his ”medicine” comment is apt; it raises the question of what illness the impeachment effort is supposed to cure, and whether the remedy is in fact worse than the disease.
