DilmaRousseff

Quora Answer : Is the impeachment of President Rousseff an excuse to roll back progressive policies?

Apr 22, 2016

Judging by what the deputies in the Camera actually said, when announcing their vote (Why vote to impeach Dilma Rousseff?), then totally.

The majority claimed to be voting for their families. Some notoriously claimed it was for agribusiness, for military torturers, for the police, for their church, for unborn children (ie. against abortion rights), for Israel (ie. against Brazilian support for the Palestinians), for the Masons, against the possibility of giving children sex-changes (ie any kind of state support for young trans people), against "communism" (the right continue to label the centre-left PT as plotting to create communism in Brazil), against "bolivarianism" (a policy of creating a block of aligned centre-left countries in South America to balance the influence of the US and Europe), for Catholic media etc.

Right-wing Evangelical pastor and deputy Marco Feliciano explicitly told the BBC ('Se Cunha é malvado, é meu malvado favorito') that Dilma's troubles started when she brought in anti-homophobia legislation which he spins as "criminalizing the Bible".

Nobody in Brazil, pro- or anti- government, and nobody on Quora, pro- or anti- government, believes that the impeachment is about the actual content of the accusations. Everyone knows that it's a political manoeuvring, aimed at putting different people with different policies in power.

Now, some of the people involved might be simply out for themselves. Perhaps there are PMDB politicians who support impeachment simply to get their hands on some more lucrative opportunities. But from the rhetoric, it's clear that many more are against the progressive policies and climate that the PT tried to create in Brazil over the last 15 years and want to roll back to a situation that is more socially conservative and economically stratified.