by Carola Sole with Sebastian Smith in Rio de Janeiro
Agence France Presse
BRASILIA, Brazil (AFP) — Judges on Brazil’s electoral court were expected to start voting Wednesday in a case that could topple scandal-tainted President Michel Temer.
The Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) is examining whether the 2014 reelection of President Dilma Rousseff and her then-vice president Temer should be invalidated because of corrupt campaign funding.
There was no indication in the opening session late Tuesday as to which way the seven-judge panel will vote. However, voting was expected to begin in Wednesday’s session, judge by judge, starting with the lead justice Herman Benjamin.
Each vote, accompanied by the judge’s legal reasoning, was expected to take a good hour and the court has scheduled a further two sessions on Thursday for the expected finale.
If the court votes to scrap the election result, Temer — who took over only last year when Rousseff was impeached — would himself risk losing his office.
The center-right president, who faces a separate, potentially devastating corruption probe, says the election court will absolve him.
“Temer should not have to pay the price for the history of corruption in Brazil,” Temer’s lawyer Gustavo Guedes said.
But Nicolao Dino, a deputy prosecutor, said there had been “a clear abuse of economic power.”
Even if found guilty, Temer would be able to appeal. A judge on the TSE could also decide to adjourn the court hearings, with the whole process potentially still dragging on for weeks.
Troubles pile up
Analysts previously considered that the court would let off Temer, allowing him to finish his mandate through 2018.
Brazil is still shaken by the trauma of Rousseff’s impeachment and Temer has argued repeatedly that he is needed to restore stability and see through austerity reforms meant to rebuild Brazil’s sickly economy.
But Temer’s political standing has been dramatically weakened by the revelation last month of secretly recorded audio in which he is allegedly heard approving payment of hush money from a meatpacking tycoon to a top politician jailed for corruption.
The opening of a probe into the hush money allegations led to hopes among Temer’s opponents that the TSE will seize the opportunity to bring him down — even if the election case is unrelated.
Benjamin told the court Tuesday that Brazil’s courts “judge facts as facts and not based on political expediency.”
But Temer’s lawyer has accused Prosecutor General Rodrigo Janot — who heads the corruption probe — of leaning on the TSE “to find the president guilty.”
Lame duck
If Temer is convicted by the electoral court, he can appeal, but he’d still face the ongoing parallel corruption probe and his grip on power may become untenable.
The key partner in his center-right alliance in Congress, the PSDB party, has indicated that it is waiting to hear the results at the election court before deciding whether to withdraw support for the president.
Without the PSDB, Temer’s PMDB party would be highly unlikely to find the necessary support to enact controversial pension reform that is at the center of Temer’s austerity plans.
That would turn him into even more of a lame duck, just as the corruption probe intensifies.
Janot could at any time request that the Supreme Court accept formal corruption and obstruction of justice charges against Temer, triggering a trial and possibly forcing Brazil into its second change of president in just over a year.
© Agence France-Presse