Rousseff’s champions appeal to Francis

Pope Francis has stepped into the political turbulence engulfing Brazil by meeting two prominent opponents of the impeachment process against suspended president, Dilma Rousseff.

Leticia Sabatella, an actress, and Kenarik Boujikian Felippe, a leading Brazilian judge of Armenian origin, met Francis in his Casa Santa Marta residence last Monday. They gave him a letter by Marcello Lavenère, a lawyer and adviser to the Brazilian bishops, who is highly critical of the impeachment. The letter describes the process against the first female president of the country as “devoid” of legal credibility and claims that Brazil was on the verge of suffering from a coup.

The impeachment process is based on claims that the left-wing Rousseff misappropriated public funds, but her defenders say that the move has been led by the country’s wealthy and privileged elite with an agenda to seize power.  “I must declare objectively that my country is on the brink of suffering a ‘coup’, through the usurpation, under the guise of an impeachment process, with no legal standing, of President Dilma Rousseff’s mandate, legitimised by 54 million votes,” Lavenère writes. “Having been re-elected at the end of 2014, through a coalition headed by the Workers Party and which won by a margin of four million votes, President Dilma took office in January 2015.

“Since then, the opposition parties have undertaken an intense campaign to destabilise the Government, taking advantage of a financial crisis which has seen rising unemployment, reduced investment and lower GDP …  The large media corporations, largely oligopolies, have taken a stand against the Government, thereby artificially contributing to the worsening of tensions.”

Brazil’s social movements have strongly defended Rousseff with Boujikian telling reporters that the meeting with the Pope allowed Francis to hear that side of the story. “He listened to us carefully, he said he will pray for the Brazilian people,” she said.

In 2014, Boujikian took part in a meeting at the Vatican between the Pope and popular movements and again during Francis’ visit to Bolivia a year later.

Rousseff’s vice-president, Michel Temer (pictured), a Catholic, has formed a centre-right administration for the 180 days of the Senate’s impeachment deliberations, but the evangelical “bullets, beef and Bible” caucus, which wants to strengthen the military and tighten restrictions on abortion and gay marriage, is increasingly influential. One of its leaders is Social Christian congressman Marco Feliciano, who has joined forces with Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain and apologist for the 1964-1985 military dictatorship.

The two appear to have made a Blair-Brown type deal on who will run for high office. “Bolsonaro will be our candidate for president in 2018,” Feliciano told The Guardian. “I will run for the senate next time and for the presidency later.”