Dilma Rousseff Initiates Dialogue with Brazilian Congress
In the midst of impeachment charges and a national corruption scandal, President Dilma Rousseff set a cooperative tone for the new year last Tuesday by paying a personal visit to the opening ceremonies of the National Congress of Brazil. While there, she delivered a forty-minute address to a joint session of both houses of Congress outlining her policy priorities, with emphasis on measures to revitalize the economy. While many members of Congress still vehemently oppose Rousseff and her policies, her initiative to engage in dialogue suggests a willingness to cooperate with her opponents and, in turn, decrease her risk of impeachment. The International Monetary Fund recently published forecasts which project that, in addition to the 3.8% retraction in the economy in 2015, Brazil will continue to recede by another 3.5% in 2016 and experience 0% growth in 2017. Many attribute the country’s current recession, its worst since The Great Depression, to political upheaval and the Petrobras corruption scandal, which have discouraged investment and stable growth.
Rousseff cited this crisis in her speech when she proposed several temporary measures to ensure fiscal stability, including an emergency mechanism that would allow the federal government greater freedom in apportioning state funds and a tax to cover social programs. Both measures are controversial and elicited loud boos from many representatives.
Despite this show of indignation, many observers see the speech and its largely positive public reception as signs that the risk of Rousseff’s impeachment is lowering. Eduardo Cunha, speaker of the Lower House and an advocate of Rousseff’s impeachment, assured Brazilians that his chamber would analyze her proposals on the basis of their merits, despite political difficulties. Some of those “difficulties,” however, are his own: Mr. Cunha recently escaped an ethics committee investigation of his suspicious bank accounts in Switzerland and the $5 million payment reportedly paid to him by Petrobras.
Rousseff merely asked that the Congress “keep in mind facts, not opinions.”