Impeachment committee hearing at Brazil Senate marked by heated altercations

The Special Committee on Impeachment in Brazil's Senate held a ten-hour meeting Monday (May 2) to hear three expert witnesses on behalf of the case for President Dilma Rousseff's impeachment.

The three witnesses—Julio Oliveira, a prosecutor with the Federal Court of Audits; Fábio Osório, a lawyer, and Maurício Conti, a tax law professor—reaffirmed the arguments for impeachment. They maintained that the accounting maneuvers that became known as “fiscal backpedaling” and the approval of additional budget appropriations without congressional authorization by Rousseff's administration are grounds for impeaching Rousseff under the Fiscal Accountability Act.

At the end of the session, however, pro-government senators reaffirmed their conviction that impeachment is unfounded, despite the expert witnesses' repeated claims to the contrary. “I deplore what we are experiencing in this country today,” said Senator Gleisi Hoffmann, a government ally.

The tension at the hearing prompted heated altercations between senators. In one loud argument, Senators Ronaldo Caiado and Lindbergh Farias exchanged insults over a news report accusing the government of deleting important information from computers at the presidential Palácio do Planalto to create difficulties for a post-impeachment administration under Vice-President Michel Temer.

Translated by Mayra Borges