Deja vu with reservations

On April 17, the lower house of the Brazilian National Congress (Parliament) gave the green light to the impeachment process against President Dilma Rousseff. Two-thirds of the House - 342 deputies out of 513 - voted at an emergency meeting for the early resignation of the leader of the country

Rousseff is accused of misappropriating funds during the last presidential campaign, of creating a kind of black box office that was personally controlled by her, of falsifying government statistics that were supposed to present the results of her activities as head of state in a more favorable light. Added to this is a gigantic corruption scandal at the state oil company Petrobras, which revealed that its management received at least $3.8 billion in bribes, kickbacks and money laundering operations.

The impeachment proceedings against Rousseff were initiated in December last year. But then it seemed that her opponents would not be able to gain the required number of votes - two-thirds of the deputies of the lower house and a simple majority of the members of the Senate. However, now the situation has changed dramatically. The Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB), led by the country's current Vice President Michel Temer, and two other parties left the government coalition. Their members have gone into opposition, and now they only have to convince 40 doubting servants of the people in order to gain the 342 votes needed to launch the impeachment process. The chances that this will happen, according to Brazilian experts, are more than 90%. And Rouseff herself, of course, understands this. Otherwise, I would hardly have missed the Olympic flame lighting ceremony - in less than four months, the Summer Olympic Games will start in Brazil.

Events in Brazil bring to mind Boris Yeltsin's confrontation with Ruslan Khasbulatov and Alexander Rutskoi in 1993. The "political trial" of Rousseff, as impeachment was dubbed in Brazil, was arranged by the speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha - in Russia, Khasbulatov played the same role. And now vice-president Michel Temer, with whom Rousseff was nominated in the elections, has also gone over to the side of Rousseff's enemies. Then they were allies and partners in the government for six years.

Now Temer, with his trademark smile and patrician gestures, demonstrates his extreme disdain to the head of state. According to Brazilian newspapers, he already felt like a president. And, apparently, an alpha male: a 75-year-old politician recently married a woman who is 42 years younger than him, and she, as a sign of gratitude, made herself a tattoo on her neck with the name of her beloved. But the parallels with Russia seem to end there. In 1993, Yeltsin managed to maintain control over the country with the help of a military action - the building of the Supreme Council was fired upon by tanks and seized by special forces. It is hard to imagine that President Rousseff gave the order to bombard the building of the National Congress in Brasilia, the architectural masterpiece of Oscar Niemeyer, with tank guns. There is no doubt: the political conflict, into which the majority of the Brazilian nation was drawn into the funnel (up to 4 million people can go to anti-government rallies in one weekend), will be resolved peacefully. These people - by association with Russia, "angry townspeople" - do not try to find foreign mercenaries and national traitors in their ranks, the country's political culture does not tolerate this.

And besides, there are no untouchables in Brazil. Now, as it turns out, an investigation has been launched against Vice President Temer, and against Speaker Cunha, who initiated the impeachment, and against Senate Chairman Renan Kaleirus: they are all also involved in the Petrobras scandal. So the entire Brazilian elite can go “on a stage”, which is completely unthinkable for Russia.